


Speechless

by avocadomoon



Category: Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins
Genre: Canon Compliant, Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, Surveillance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-22
Updated: 2020-05-22
Packaged: 2021-03-03 00:35:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 50,039
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24315919
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/avocadomoon/pseuds/avocadomoon
Summary: Effie was kind, she was warm, she offered comfort to anyone who needed it, microphones be damned. She had a reputation for generosity amongst the Victors that Haymitch hadn't paid any attention to, because he was so paranoid about showing his hand that he barely even said her name around other people, barely even acknowledged her existence. Everyone thought he hated her, Beetee had explained. Everyone knew the stories about how he'd made her cry in the sponsor's lounge at the opening of the 61st Games, how he'd blown up at Cecelia that time when she'd asked him to pass a message onto Effie for her.Is that why none of you assholes ever liked me?Haymitch had asked.No, we didn't like you because you were a prick,Beetee told him, which was fair enough.
Relationships: Haymitch Abernathy/Effie Trinket, Minor or Background Relationship(s)
Comments: 46
Kudos: 200





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> **YO!** within this story lies very slight **spoilers** for A Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, specifically a few references to characters and worldbuilding elements that were introduced in the prequel. No plot events from the book are included or spoiled. (It's very intense and really fucking good by the way, please read it and talk to me about it.) Also keep in mind also that I've only read the books and have not seen the movies outside of gifs. 
> 
> Warnings for child death (duh), torture, starvation, dehumanization, surveillance state, prostitution and coerced sex, forced sterilization, discussion and ideation of suicide, and the death of a pregnant teenager. And it's _still_ not as violent as the new book!

For three years after his victory, Haymitch Abernathy did not attend the Games ceremonies. His family was dead and Juniper was gone; he didn't see the point. He did not think about the consequences, mostly because he did not think about much of anything at all. At any rate, nobody seemed to care for the first few years. He showed up on time, and turned his face away. Turned up late to the Reapings, late enough that he wouldn't be forced to step on stage, and disappeared into his room on the trains. Went to the parties and stared at the walls. Didn't talk to anyone. Nobody said anything. 

The Escort for Twelve was an old woman at the time of Haymitch's Reaping, at least by Capitol standards - thirty-five was the official age given on all the interviews, the profiles they published in the magazines and the flyers they'd hand out to the younger fans that gathered outside of the parties, pushing against the ropes in their absurd, peacock outfits. Haymitch knew she was older, though; he could see the wrinkles beneath her makeup whenever she leaned in close to roughly fix his jacket, or slap his face sometimes, when he annoyed her. And anyway, it wasn't as if nobody noticed that her profiles had said 'thirty-five' for at least six years. This was a particularly sensitive spot for her, something Haymitch noticed quickly, because it was hard not to pay attention to a Capitol's soft spots. His eye for strategy was half-assed, in those days, but it was still there. 

She was prudish and shrill, openly contemptuous of him and of the tributes, all of whom were young and underfed, like they always were. Her wigs were green, in deference to her name, which was Mrs. Delta Greenheart - which is how she insisted on being referred to at all times, _Mrs. Delta Greenheart,_ like she was being announced at a ball. Haymitch didn't talk to her if he could help it, which suited Mrs. Delta Greenheart just fine - as long as he showed up on time, physically present if not mentally engaged - she didn't really seem to give two shits about him. It was almost comfortable. 

He wasn't drinking, back then. He snorted dust, from time to time - only when he was in the Capitol, however, the hallucinations that dust gave you were too intense when he was sitting in his mother's house in Twelve - but it was expensive and there were too many strings attached when you tried to get it from somebody at a party. Chaff warned him about that, and he warned Haymitch about the things that were going to happen once his grace period was over, too. Haymitch still couldn't bring himself to care all that much. 

"Your Games weren't that popular, and they can't parade you around too much after you embarrassed them like you did," he said. "They'll let you fade into obscurity for awhile, but once they find a use for you you'll have to snap out of it. You need a plan of some kind. They've killed Victors before, Haymitch. You're going to have to be careful."

Haymitch knew about that, of course everybody had heard about Teak Whetlock, the Victor from Nine who died in a "train accident," not to mention Amaryll Meadowes from Seven, who died in a "fire." Haymitch wondered idly about how they'd do him; a "mining accident," most likely. Never mind that Haymitch had never worked in the mines, like he would have if he'd never been Reaped. Never mind that he never left his house when he was in Twelve, that he only ate whatever Sae dropped on his back porch. People would believe it anyway. 

He wasn't popular in Twelve, not anymore. In the hazy weeks after his victory, before they'd killed his family, people had congratulated him, shook his hand when he ventured out to the baker's or the tailoring shop. Seam people had rooted for him; he'd found out later that they'd been trying to raise money to send him some food in the Arena, which was sweet even though they hadn't gotten nearly enough together to buy anything. The town people were less effusive because of Maysilee, but they didn't spit on him in the streets like they did later. Three years of tributes, six children who hadn't returned, and all they remembered was that Haymitch hadn't lifted a finger to help them. 

_What's the point,_ he would've said to them, if he'd had the energy. But he wasn't doing much talking at the time, on Chaff's advice. 

Chaff gave him a lot of advice, back then. _Slouch when they look at you, don't wash your hair, don't flirt. Keep your chin up. If you kill yourself you're only making their lives easier, so find a reason to keep your eyes open, dumbass. Don't fuck the other Victors. And don't talk to the Escorts. Never,_ ever _talk to the Escorts._

Sound advice, that Haymitch sort of followed, in the sense that he didn't care enough to rebel against any of it. He slept, he woke up, he ate, he moved around occasionally. When he was cognizant enough to remember things, he would cry, but only when he was alone. He didn't think about his mother or Bale, Juniper or Maysilee or the dead kids he hadn't mentored at all; he didn't think about any of that. And he definitely wasn't thinking about having a conversation with Mrs. Delta Greenheart, who showed up at his house every year like a bejeweled horseman of death, snapping her surgically-elongated fingers at him, the jewels in her teeth sparkling dangerously every time she opened her mouth. 

He wondered, from time to time, if she had kids. If any of them had kids. It was hard to imagine that they did, with the callousness they displayed towards the tributes, the dismissive way they brushed off the reality of what they were doing. Delta was particularly cold, much moreso than the rest, but the Escort from Nine seemed to be a bit kinder. Backstage at the interviews for the 54th year, she'd actually stepped in and helped one of Twelve's kids, a young girl named Elena who was having a panic attack. Haymitch watched in confusion, wary and suspicious, but the Escort - Millie Everbreeze, a former opera singer only in her second year with the Games - didn't even look at him. She patted the girl on the head, once she was calm, and then tapped her way back over to Ten's tributes, balancing effortlessly on the bizarre-looking U-shaped heels that were all the rage in the Capitol at the time. 

"None of them do," Chaff told him. They could talk openly in certain places at the Capitol, certain ballrooms had blind spots and balconies that were too difficult to bug. Haymitch sometimes felt as if those few moments, here and there, when Chaff would drop the smiles and talk with Haymitch about serious things, were the only moments in which they were really acting like humans. "They sterilize the Escorts, Haymitch. None of them can get pregnant. It's the first thing they do, doesn't matter who they are or what District they're assigned to."

"You're kidding," Haymitch said. He'd always thought they were safe. He'd always thought all Capitols were rich, living free, unencumbered lives. And a lot of them did, to be sure - but the longer he'd spent in the city, the more he'd understood that there was always a catch. Not always obvious at first, but always there. "Do they - what they do with the popular Victors. Is it the same for them?"

"Sometimes." Chaff shrugged. "Poor Millie from Nine - they do it to her. But she's willful." Chaff looked sad, in a way he rarely did, when they were discussing the Escorts. "Rebellious. She won't last long."

And beautiful, Haymitch thought. It was hard for Millie to hide, even with the garish makeup. She was very beautiful, in a natural way that most Capitols envied, even though they scoffed at it. 

"Because she helped my tribute?" Haymitch asked. 

"Because she cares about them, yeah," Chaff said, even though it wasn't quite the same thing. "Do you watch the interviews for the other Districts? Never mind, of course you don't. She's too motherly towards her kids. She made a big scene at the launch this year with the boy from Ten, cried and hugged him. It was a hit with the audience, but they won't like it. It makes them look cruel."

Haymitch scoffed. "They kill those kids for sport, and a singer crying on television is what makes them look cruel?"

"Anything that makes people remember that they _are_ children, yeah," Chaff said. They were standing on the roof of a mansion in the richest part of the Capitol; above their heads was the nightly Anthem, a holographic projection of the Panem Solidarity Poem that lit up every night at the same time, without fail. In bedrooms and living rooms all throughout the city, Capitol children were staring out of their windows, mouthing the words along with the glittering, golden letters, big enough in the sky for the entire city to see. "And anything that might suggest that Escorts aren't totally happy to be here? That's worse."

Haymitch knew, intellectually, that they were chosen by Snow personally. He hadn't thought through the implications, mostly because Delta was such a heinous bitch anyway that he didn't care. "They compete to get the spots. Those fashion shows - "

"Kid," Chaff said, shaking his head, "nobody _chooses_ to be here. Some of them like it, some of them hate it. Depends on the person. But nobody _chooses_ it."

Haymitch didn't want to feel sorry for Millie Everbreeze, who walked around in shoes that looked like horse's hooves and had Reaped the boy she cried over herself, with her own clawed hand. But it was obvious, once he started paying attention, that Chaff was right; at the parties, she was seen with one man after another after another, and all of them were old, with rheumy eyes and hands that shook from morphling or dust addiction. Former Gamemakers, most of them - pampered, loyal Capitol men who had earned some sort of honor or respect, and Millie went home with all of them, one by one, party after party, too regular to be by choice. Delta said disgusting things about her, and Haymitch knew that most people probably thought the same things they thought about the Victors who had to do similar things. Indigo from Nine, and Graeme from Two - the beautiful ones, the young ones, the popular ones. Everyone knew, even Haymitch, who usually made an effort not to know anything. The Capitol ran on rumors the same way that Twelve ran on coal - everyone was far too busy pretending not to notice certain things that they ended up not noticing anything. 

He didn't want to feel sympathy for her, or for any of them, not only because he didn't want to feel anything at all most days, but because of what happened to Millie Everbreeze in the end - only a few months after 54th Victor was crowned, she overdosed in her apartment in the city, and pictures of her half-dressed dead body were splashed all over the magazines for months. Haymitch saw this on television in Twelve, and knew right away that it was a message for him, just as it was for Mrs. Delta Greenheart and every other Victor and Escort who was watching the same news stories - why else would it be on the government news bulletins? The sordid pictures, the graphic shot of Millie's naked torso, her breasts bruised by somebody's rough hands? It was the same message Haymitch had received, a month after his victory. The same message he remembered every time he woke up and walked past Bale's old bedroom, the hinges rusting shut, the doorknob coated in dust. He didn't need the fucking reminder. 

Mrs. Delta Greenheart died too, two weeks later, in a botched plastic surgery that had been intended to alter her eye color permanently. They didn't put _her_ photos on the news, but then again they probably didn't want to remind everyone how old she really was. A Peacekeeper delivered the official notice to Haymitch's door and loomed over him as he read it; his presence was required in the Capitol for the beauty competitions that would unfold to choose two new Escorts. Haymitch wasn't even surprised. 

Not every Escort got out by dying; the one who took Delta's spot got married to a man high up in Snow's administration after only three years in the Games. She became a housewife, which was fairly ironic, and Haymitch thought, _good for her,_ in a lazy, absent sort of way. The man she married was old - almost ninety - so nobody would expect her to have children. It was a neat arrangement. And then when he died, she'd have his money. She was either lucky, or smart. Or both. 

Her name was Sugar. She and Haymitch got on well enough; she wasn't cruel like Delta had been, but she wasn't friendly either. Mostly they ignored each other, which was fine. He had it better than Chaff, whose Escort was a harpy, the daughter of Snow's Defense Minister. Chaff told him that she watched the Games from the betting tables at the Training Center, holding court with the socialites. Placing bets and laughing when they died. 

He didn't want a Millie, but he didn't want a harpy, either. Haymitch had started drinking, somewhere around the 56th year, or maybe the 55th, depending on your definition. He wanted someone to tell him where to stand and then keep her mouth shut otherwise. He wanted a doll, which wasn't all that different from what the Capitol wanted out of Escorts, which he should probably feel guilty about if he weren't so busy feeling guilty about everything else. 

They whored him out occasionally - he wasn't popular, and he wasn't all that handsome anymore, but he was still a Victor and that was enough, for some Capitols - but Haymitch counted himself lucky, in that area at least. Most of the women were young - starstruck little girls, who'd been fans of his from the Games, who wanted to be hugged and kissed and treated gently. His drinking kept the vultures away - the old, cruel ones wanted people like Indigo or Graeme, Victors with muscles and more charm for the cameras than Haymitch had the energy to muster. 

Furthermore, he had some small measure of influence by virtue of being a Quell Victor, something that Haymitch slowly realized the Gamemakers had been hoping he wouldn't notice. Caesar Flickerman, who hosted the Escort competitions in the same flashy way that he juggled the Games interviews, had started to send him the files on the candidates, asking him for opinions. Haymitch got the impression that this wasn't a privilege extended to other Victors, and that Caesar Flickerman was quite possibly a little too visible, too popular, too _untouchable_ for Snow's comfort. 

_You will have to work with her, whoever she is,_ Caesar wrote to him, on stationery that was powder blue and scented with something that had gone sour in the mail. It stunk up the entire room of Haymitch's house, and he always had to soak it in water until the paper disintegrated instead of throwing it away, so the scent wouldn't linger. _It would behoove all of us if you gave us some indication of the type of woman you would get along with._

It gave Haymitch a nasty taste in his mouth, the way they treated him as part of the machine, a co-conspirator somehow, but of course that's exactly what he was. He went back and forth with himself about it for days, making himself sick with the comparisons to the Reapings - what's the difference between choosing a name on a slip of paper, and choosing a headshot? - but in the end, of course he did what they asked. It was logical, in a sick sort of way. He _would_ have to put up with her. 

Many of them were very young; half the pile he was sent were teenagers. Haymitch vetoed outright anyone younger than eighteen, which eliminated a sickening amount of the candidates. From there, it was simply a roulette wheel: the files didn't tell him anything substantial, of course, they were just press interviews from the auditions. _What color do you look your best in? Who was your favorite Victor?_ He could read between the lines on a few of them, sense the fear that lingered beneath a few of their answers. He vetoed those too, and any of the women that had families. It was the least he could do. 

He settled on five women, with the knowledge the Snow would obviously have the final selection - but whatever influence it was that Caesar was inflicting on the process, whatever card he was playing, Haymitch was bold enough at the time to go along with. The drink made him reckless in that period of his life; it made him resentful. Not rebellious - again, what the fuck was the point - but angry enough to flex a little. Like a dying man, twitching as he bled out, he thought bitterly. _Poke me and I might actually do something._

These five women: models, all of them. Orphans with no living relatives. Two of them had lost their inheritances to the government when their parents died, and were obviously in it for the money. Plumeria, Agafya, Mist, Euphemia, and Zora - he didn't really have a preference. All of them seemed a little meek in the videos, a little naive. They were all beautiful, of course. None of them seemed cruel, or sadistic. Haymitch was the cruel one, by choosing them. He would feel guilty about that for a long time. 

The competition was more of a beauty contest, and was treated with much less excitement and interest than the Games were. Haymitch watched the first couple of hours and couldn't stomach any more of it - it was rigged, of course, the audience votes were faked, and most of the contestants seemed to know it. Most of the ones eliminated early on weren't even in the files Haymitch had been sent, which meant they were never actually candidates in the first place.

The five that Haymitch had chosen were the finalists, which meant something, pricked an instinct that he hadn't bothered to listen to in quite some time. The knowledge that he'd done this, had a hand in this, made him turn the TV back on and watch, force himself to sit through the vapid interviews and listen for what they were _really_ saying, which was more than any of them probably intended. Agafya's tactic was to be the rabble rouser, bitchy and catty at every opportunity, which meant she really didn't want to win; people liked Victors who were feisty, but the Escorts had to be cheerful and bubbly, pleasant like a piece of furniture. Euphemia played it up with her, got in little arguments with her during the stupid contests they made them do, did private interviews with Caesar about this slight or that mean comment, harping on relentlessly about how hurt she was by Agafya's attitude, which meant...that it was planned, that Euphemia was _helping_ her get eliminated, Haymitch slowly realized. Effie, she preferred to be called. Effie Trinket. 

"Really, I have tried to be as nice to her as I could," she told Caesar - told the cameras, really - tearfully. She was wearing a golden wig, in fashion that year, straight and long, all the way down her back, almost to her knees. A modest-looking dress - what did that mean? Most of them dressed provocatively - and teardrop shaped jewels glued to her face, down her cheekbones. Her eyelashes and eyebrows were dusted with gold powder, and she'd either had surgery to make her pupils look bigger, or she was wearing some sort of designer contacts. She looked like a crying, golden statue. "But at every turn, she has rejected my offers of friendship and kindness. Really, I truly don't understand why people insist on focusing on the negative aspects of life. To choose to be rude and hateful, when you could live your life with grace and poise...isn't every day just a blessing in our beautiful city? Aren't we all so lucky to be born here in Panem?" She didn't have jewels in her teeth like a lot of women did, and she was pretty. Haymitch watched her grin at the crowd, and felt his heart sink: she was going to win. She was definitely the one, and Haymitch had put her there. 

None of the others really stood out. It was her clothes, and her bubbly little patriotic speeches that seemed so natural, even if Haymitch suspected it was just theatre. Nobody who wore teardrops on their face - jeweled or not - really _meant_ it when they said _Glory to Panem forever,_ and as the competition dragged on her dresses became even more demure, even as the other women's outfits got skimpier and skimpier. It had to mean something.

"Snow already picked her," Chaff explained, weeks later as they met up again at the Capitol for the final episode's filming, which the Victors were meant to make an appearance on. "I heard Mags' Escort talking about it. They probably told her weeks ago. She's trying to make herself look innocent, more childlike, so they won't whore her out."

"Maybe," Haymitch said. He wasn't sure. Portraying herself as a young child wouldn't do much to protect her from the perverted old men in the Capitol - if anything it would only make her more desirable. She'd seemed too savvy, the way she'd neatly maneuvered Agafya out of the line of fire, not to know that. "Her file said that her father was a Gamemaker in training when he died of a heart attack. The Presidency seized her inheritance since he worked for the Games."

"You think she wants the job?" Chaff asked. He whistled. "Could be bad news for you. I know you didn't like her, but Delta wasn't the worst out of the bunch. A cutthroat Escort, a real sadistic one like mine - in a District like yours? She'd eat your kids up every year."

"No," Haymitch said, thinking of the teardrops. "No, I don't think so." What he was actually thinking - or wondering, more like - was if her father's heart attack had actually been a "heart attack." If maybe Effie Trinket's long dresses and modest necklines were the only way she could resist, the only way she could assert some sort of independence in the hurricane she was currently in. 

A dangerous thing to think, and honestly he hoped he was wrong. He _really_ didn't want to end up with a Millie. 

She never flinched. At the taping, Haymitch kissed her hand like they told him to, smiling at the cameras, which was easier since he was high as a kite. He could tell she noticed, her eyes widening just a little as she took in the state of his pupils - the stylist who'd prodded at him had said it would make his face look 'softer', whatever that meant - but she didn't say anything. Certainly not on stage, and not even afterwards, at the congratulatory party at the Presidential Mansion. Maybe because she got high too - he saw her snorting a line of dust with Seneca Crane and his wife Acacia near the buffet table. 

Most people got high at the Mansion. It was, most of the time, the only way to get through the parties there in one piece. 

He didn't see her again that night, not after that - but he received a letter from her a few weeks later, after he returned to Twelve. He didn't even notice it for days, not exactly in the habit of checking his mail, but Sae had scolded him for letting the letterbox overflow so he dragged the pile in and dumped it on the living room floor. Right there on top was a letter in a gold envelope, only slightly bent by the postman's efforts to stuff it into the box. 

It didn't say much of anything, and Haymitch didn't even read the whole thing. A long, overly polite message about what a pleasure it was to meet him, how she looked forward to their working relationship, yadda yadda. Haymitch didn't reply, but he didn't throw the letter away, either. For some reason, it didn't feel like something he had to do. 

She was timid, at first. He could see that she was terrified, even though she was trying not to be. Something must have happened, in the months between her victory and appointment and her first Reaping as an Escort, because her face was deathly pale beneath the powder, and she jumped at the slightest noise. She didn't make eye contact with him, and didn't talk to him directly if she could help it. Haymitch wondered if it was him she was scared of - she absolutely would've watched his Games, she was only ten when he won, and the Games were mandatory viewing for every Capitol child younger than fourteen - but they often showed Escorts unedited footage once they were appointed. The ugly stuff, embarrassing or gruesome things that didn't always make it into the broadcast. Maybe Effie Trinket had seen Haymitch shitting in the woods, or puking up blood after killing the girl from Two. Maybe she was frightened to death because she couldn't get the image out of her head of Haymitch prying a piece of bread out of a twelve-year-old girl's cold dead hand, because he couldn't afford not to eat it. 

She was fine with the tributes. A fourteen-year-old Seam girl, skinny as a twig and stricken with some sort of cold; Haymitch knew she had no chance. The boy was stronger - eighteen, broad shoulders - but he lost it in training, started a fight with the Career from One, became hysterical in the aftermath and had to be sedated. At least he'd make for good television, Haymitch thought bitterly. But no presence of mind, no strategy - he was too scared. No path to victory for either of them. 

Effie lectured them about manners, poise in front of the cameras, told them not to fidget and to keep their clothes nice - she was hesitant at first, but gained confidence when the girl listened and seemed to try. Haymitch avoided them all and drank himself to sleep so he wouldn't have to watch, and Effie didn't bother him. Avoided him in the halls, didn't speak to him at meals. It suited Haymitch just fine. 

But once they were in the Arena, she shifted. She changed into brightly colored dresses, swapped out the plain, straight-haired wig for a curly, garish one with butterfly pins sticking out of it at odd spots, and attacked the party circuit with a vengeance. She still didn't talk to him, or tell him to go anywhere or do anything, but he could tell she was really trying. And she pulled them a couple of sponsors - must have been friends of her father's who were doing her favors, neither of them gave much money and both of them had a pitying sort of air - not that it did anything for them, in the end. 

When the girl died, not even five minutes in, she gasped out loud and then covered her mouth quickly, her eyes growing wide and horrified. Sitting next to her at the Penthouse, Haymitch watched her warily, wondering if she was going to cry or laugh or some other third, horrific option that hadn't occurred to him yet, but she just closed her eyes and tensed, like she was waiting for something to happen. When nothing did, she let her hand fall to her lap, but kept her eyes closed. Like she didn't want to watch. 

Not that he blamed her. "She's still gonna be dead whether your eyes are open or not," Haymitch said to her, trying to gauge her reaction. But she hardly reacted at all - just opened her eyes again, glancing briefly at his profile before looking back at the Games, still playing out sickly on the screen. "It was inevitable. The boy has a better chance. Plus, we have some money to work with."

"Yes, how exciting," she said, her tone not quite matching the look on her face. Haymitch frowned at her, that same prick of instinct wiggling in the back of his head. "Really though, I thought she'd put up more of a fight! What a shame."

"Right," he said dully, and slid his empty glass back onto the coffee table, picking up the whiskey bottle to drink from instead. She looked at him, watching as he took a long drink, but didn't say anything. The look on her face was utterly, completely neutral. 

They were alone in the penthouse. All the Districts had their own apartments, in separate buildings - to keep the tributes from colluding beforehand, out of sight of the cameras probably - but every Escort Haymitch had worked with so far had brought her own entourage of people - personal stylists, Avoxes, assistants, friends, what have you. Effie didn't bring anybody. She dressed herself, as far as he could tell. And she didn't like the Avoxes - she was polite to them, but she dismissed them as soon as she could, told them to go home as soon as the kids were gone. 

He didn't know what it meant. She wasn't a Millie - not exactly. But she didn't want to be there, that he knew for sure. She was a good actress, but her flinches gave her away. 

They watched the entire Games together on that couch, which went very quickly that year; the winner was clear from the start, a headstrong boy from Eight that picked off the other tributes one by one. Effie chattered emptily the whole time, her body growing tenser and tenser as he got closer to their boy, who had lost his mind in a bloody fight with two girls from One and Eleven, and spent most of the Games muttering to himself in a cove and scratching his arms until they bled. They sent him food and water with the sponsor money and the boy ignored it, letting it sit abandoned at the mouth of his cove, lost in his own head. The cameras spent an insulting amount of time on his ramblings, and the commentary from Caesar and Claudius was acidic and witty. Twelve was the comic relief that year; not that it was ever anything different. 

Still, he held on until the end - it was the final confrontation, Eight's boy and Twelve's. Better than they'd ever done, longer than they'd ever lasted since Haymitch had become a mentor. They fought for a long time before Eight finally broke his back, wrestling him into a headlock and brutally snapping his spine - Haymitch was a little proud of him. Putting up an actual fight - it was impressive. 

Effie was crying silently as she watched. He only noticed when he leaned forward to turn off the television - he fucking hated the post-Arena shit, the commentary and replays while they cleaned up the Victor, pumped them with whatever drugs they had to to get them ready for an interview - and he caught a glimpse of her face, makeup running, eyes clenching shut again, not making a sound. Haymitch stared at her for a long second, not sure what to do. Not an act - he could tell that much. The thought of comforting her repulsed him, but what would his mama say, if he let her just sit there and cry? Capitol or not, she didn't choose this - nobody did, like Chaff said. There was a part of Haymitch that still felt like his sixteen-year-old self, the tiny little corner of his heart that hadn't completely shriveled up, pickled by pain and alcohol. Some part that still lived, despite everything. 

"Effie," he said, the first time he ever said her name. She flinched. "Listen, sweetheart - "

Her eyes shot open. Frantically, she interrupted him. "Bad luck! Such bad luck! And for my first year, too!" Haymitch froze with his hand halfway outstretched, watching as she skittered away from him like a frightened deer. "Oh, and he lasted so long, too - I'd really hoped! Such a shame, what a shame. A strong boy, I really thought we had a chance. Oh well! Bygones will be bygones, there's always next year!"

Her voice was a little high-pitched, a little more manic than she usually sounded; Haymitch could hear the terror in it. Slowly, he lowered his hand to the couch between them. "Bad luck, yeah," he said cautiously, watching her tense face. Her voice still didn't match her expression; it was disconcerting as hell. "But we did well. Tried our best, and all that."

"That we did!" Effie chirped, and practically rolled off the couch to get away from him, angling her torso so she wouldn't touch him, so sharply it was almost comical. "We'll do better next time. A good faith effort - we'll have good chances with sponsors next year. Hopefully good luck at the Reaping. Onward and upwards, that's what my father used to say!"

She was hugging herself as she talked, backing her way out of the room, her eyes darting around like she was waiting for a Peacekeeper to jump out of the shadows and shoot her on sight. Haymitch sighed. "Maybe we could, ah," he said, rising to his feet and flinching himself when she took a startled step backwards. "Maybe we could discuss some strategy, you and I. For next year. Do you drink? I left a good bottle of wine up on the roof." He paused meaningfully, raising an eyebrow, and her eyes shot to his face. "We could...discuss options. If you're not too tired, of course."

"The roof?" Effie laughed, and her face barely moved. "I couldn't. No offense meant, Mr. Abernathy, but it wouldn't be proper. Not for a single lady, and a single man. Alone on the roof! I couldn't possibly."

Haymitch frowned at her. What the fuck did that mean? "We could…" he blanked. "It's a nice night, is all. I could use some fresh air." He made a confused face at her, bravely, and her expression eased a little, her arms loosening from their death grip at her elbows. "I wasn't suggesting anything improper. Swear."

She hesitated for a moment, and Haymitch looked at her closely - her disheveled face, the blotchy skin at her neck, where her makeup had rubbed away. She was young - only nineteen. She still had some baby fat in her cheeks, for fuck's sake. Her father had died when she was twelve, and she was raised by an aunt who died only a year before, right after she'd landed her first modeling contract. Her file had said that her hobbies were parasailing, art history, and needlepoint. Standing there in her ridiculous wig, she looked like a little girl. Only a year older than their tribute. 

And Haymitch had put her here. He swallowed hard, and tried not to think about it. 

"I'm tired," she said, with a faint tone of apology. Her hands loosened, and her arms fell to her sides, and her face looked truly apologetic. Haymitch stared at her in confusion, watching as she raised one of her hands and gently touched the back of her skull, beneath her hairline, right at the top of her spine where her head met her neck. Her eye contact was meaningful - the gesture was obviously supposed to convey something. Haymitch didn't get it. "I should turn in for the night, but thank you for the invitation. Perhaps we can discuss some strategies for next year tomorrow morning at breakfast."

"Perhaps," he echoed, watching her still as she retreated, her footsteps echoing in the hallway as she made her way back to her room. 

Chaff tore him a new one, when Haymitch asked him about it. "I _told_ not to talk to Escorts," he said furiously, shoving Haymitch's face into the concrete wall of Eleven's roof for emphasis. Haymitch struggled a little, but Chaff was stronger than him, and more sober otherwise. "I fucking _told you._ Just because you feel sorry for her doesn't mean - "

"That's why I'm _asking,_ " Haymitch interrupted, hitching his knee up against the wall for leverage and pushing back against Chaff's grip. They grappled for a second, angry but not intently fighting, before Chaff relented and let him go, stumbling backwards, still glaring at him resentfully. "I feel sorry for her, yeah. She's a fuckin' kid, and she was scared out of her mind last night of _something,_ enough that she didn't even wanna talk to me. You can't just tell me to do somethin' and not explain _why._ "

"I told you why!"

"No you didn't."

"I did! I - " Chaff stopped, rubbing his forehead. "I could've sworn I did."

Haymitch grinned at him, without humor. "You old fuckin' drunk. You didn't explain why."

"Fuck." Chaff laughed suddenly. "I am an old fuckin' drunk. And _you're_ a young fuckin' drunk. You son of a bitch." He shoved Haymitch's shoulder. "They bug them. The Escorts. That's why. Thought you knew by now."

Haymitch scoffed. "They bug everyone," he said, not understanding. "But on the roof - the antennas block it, she still could've - "

"Nah, man," Chaff said, sobering. "They bug _them._ Their bodies." Chaff gestured to his neck, in a move eerily reminiscent of the strange gesture Effie had made the night before, touching the base of her neck. "It's a microphone they inject into their skin. They can tune in and listen to them anytime, day or night. The same time they sterilize them, they wire 'em up. Send 'em in to us. So they can listen in, make sure nobody's saying anything to the kids, make sure nobody's talking about things they shouldn't." Chaff looks at him meaningfully, one eyebrow raised. "That's how they got Amaryll. We're pretty sure, anyway. She was close with her Escort."

Haymitch leaned back against the wall, exhausted all of a sudden. "Fuck," he said, rubbing his face. " _Fuck._ "

"They don't know we know. Or maybe they do and they dangle it in front of our faces. They definitely use it to keep the Escorts in line." Chaff shrugged. "Either way, you can't talk to her. Even on the roof, even in Twelve, or at her apartment, or wherever the fuck else you could think of to go. If you try to take it out, they'll kill her. If you try to block it, they'll kill her. If you say something you shouldn't - guess what? They'll fuckin' kill her. They can listen in through her _always,_ Haymitch."

Walking, talking surveillance. God, of course she'd been terrified. When he'd called her 'sweetheart,' her face had gone so pale she'd looked dead. "Every fuckin' time," Haymitch said, "every fuckin' time I think I've seen the worst thing. I see somethin' worse. There's no end. It never fuckin' ends."

"Not until we're dead," Chaff agreed, joining him at the wall. They were quiet for a second, looking out over the city. If you squinted, and forget completely about where the fuck you were, it was almost beautiful. "There's no helping her. Nothing we can do but play along. I'm sorry, brother. That's the way it is."

Haymitch didn't reply right away, thinking again of the baby fat in her face. Her tense little shudders as their tribute fought for his life - he could almost feel her trembling from his side of the couch, she was shaking so hard. "Do you think they're all monsters? The people who live here. Some of them have to see it - some of them _have_ to know."

"Some of them. Who knows." Chaff shrugged. "It's easier to deal with the ones who buy into it."

Haymitch figured he understood what that meant, for maybe the first time. It would be much easier if they were all evil people, but of course there was always a catch. "I fuckin' hate this place."

"You hate your home, too," Chaff said, not without sympathy. He grabbed Haymitch's shoulder and squeezed, and Haymitch realized, not without some small amount of horror, that if he died Haymitch would feel shitty about it. _Leverage,_ he thought, and hated himself for it. "It'd be easier for you if she was mean and old, maybe. Like Delta was. I'm sorry."

"Delta was young once too," Haymitch said. 

Chaff laughed. "But she was always mean," he said. 

There were always deaths, always accidents and tragedies in District Twelve, but it was difficult to tell what was deliberate and what was truly just bad luck. It was easy for them to cause an explosion in the mines, or a house fire, or an animal attack - the fences were weak, the houses were cheaply built and unsafe, not to mention the death trap of the mine itself. Haymitch didn't get any more popular in Twelve, but he heard about them all the same. Fathers and eldest sons, usually the providers for the families. Just regular enough that he couldn't be sure it wasn't a message for somebody. _Just_ suspicious enough that he couldn't bring himself to rest easy. 

It was the same everywhere; he wasn't unique. Chaff's sister died the night before the launch of the 61st year - a hovercraft accident. They showed photos of her corpse on television. Haymitch tried to catch him alone that year to talk, but he was distant and haggard looking, wouldn't meet anyone's eye at the parties, stood sullenly behind his tributes and didn't speak at the interview. Haymitch let him be, and wondered what it was - what Chaff had done. Wondered if it was rude of him to have even thought of asking. 

Effie was similarly distant, but Haymitch had expected that. They ignored each other stiffly, speaking to each other only when they had to. Their tributes were both very young - thirteen and twelve - and the girl wasn't right in the head, she couldn't speak very well and she had a deformity in her left hand. Birth defects - Twelve had too many of them, caused by poor medicine and whatever the fuck was in the water. When the rain dried up in the summers, most families had no choice but to drink from the runoff from the mine. 

Effie tried. She tried very hard, so much so that it was difficult to watch. She gave the girl a dress, talked to her gently and kindly, even bribed - or otherwise convinced - Caesar Flickerman to go easy on her at the interview, which Haymitch only found out when he saw the great peacock himself giving her a wink backstage before the broadcast. Haymitch wanted to tell her that it would make it worse, but he couldn't think of a way to convey that message safely, and anyway - he didn't even know if she would be receptive. Best to let her figure it out on her own, he thought - not that it made it any easier to watch. 

Twelve was the laughingstock once more - and that year, in the most terrible way possible. The boy, Warren, died quickly at the Cornucopia, but the girl latched on instantly to another tribute from Five, following her around dumbly, terrified and overwhelmed. Haymitch wasn't even sure she really understood what was happening.

It was, quite honestly, truly horrifying to watch. Haymitch hadn't thought he was capable of being horrified like that anymore, but watching the tribute from Five toy with the girl, laughing cruelly at her, slapping her around for fun - it was beyond words. She cried constantly, confused and afraid, and when she died - execution style, sobbing on her knees - Haymitch upended a table in rage. His mind went blank, white and fuzzy like it did some days when he would wake up surrounded by his own vomit and piss, unsure of how much time had passed, and when he came back to himself the viewing room at the penthouse was absolutely trashed. 

Effie had been there with him when he lost it, watching it with him stoically, but she'd clearly made herself scarce during his outburst because the entire floor was empty. Haymitch wandered from room to room blankly, numbed and exhausted, searching for alcohol, and in the small kitchenette off his bedroom he found some vodka and installed himself there for the duration, listening to the distant sounds of the garish commentary, the Games still rolling on despite him from the TV in the living room. 

He was sure for weeks afterward that there would be some sort of retribution for it, the destruction of Capitol property, but nothing happened. Effie breezed back into the penthouse the following morning and practically wrestled him into his suit for the post-Games interviews, pushing him through the entire day's schedule with a steel-edged smile and a sharp-nailed hand at his back. Haymitch wasn't sure if he was imagining it or not, but she seemed angry beneath the smile. Maybe at him, maybe not. He wasn't sure he wanted to know. 

The girl's name was Lunia. Haymitch tried to give her family his stipend money that year, as he always did. And like every other year before it, it was rejected. 

He would try, he decided that winter, when he started getting the cold shoulder at the Hob. People were beginning to hate him now - not that he could blame them. Maybe it would help if he tried, even if they still lost. It couldn't be any worse than watching another Lunia happen again, and Effie was better at getting sponsors than Sugar or Delta had been - maybe they did have half a chance. She sent him letters every year - that same gold stationery, the same weirdly effusive politeness - and Haymitch didn't quite know what to make of them, but she did mention repeatedly how much she was "looking forward to his help," so he figured she was a little peeved about his lack of enthusiasm too. 

She seemed a little taken aback at his participation the following year, but went along with it easily enough; their tributes were older that round, both of them seventeen and the children of townspeople, better fed than most. The girl was beautiful on camera and reminded him of Juniper, with her shaggy bangs always falling in her eyes, and the boy was strong from the carpentry work he was learning from his father. Maybe they had half a chance. Haymitch could try.

"The themes this year are so lovely aren't they," Effie chattered, in the back of a car on its way back from somewhere insufferable and terrifying, Haymitch had long since lost track. She liked to babble when they were in situations or places sure to be bugged, as if she could distract herself from the fact that there were ears listening in. It was annoying, but Haymitch guessed that since she was _always_ being listened to, she probably knew better than him how to deal with it. "Ice and snow...a very elegant homage to the President, don't you think?"

Haymitch snorted before he could help herself. Effie's eyes flickered to him briefly, and then quickly darted away again. "Sure."

"I've heard chatter from Hadriana and Summerdew that the arena will be similarly decorated," Effie said. Haymitch looked out the window and gritted his teeth, irked by the word 'decorated' and not wanting her to see it. "A snowy terrain. Just a guess, although judging by Acacia Crane's dress tonight, I do think they are trying to give us a hint. Do you think Birch and Neecee are prepared for such a challenge?"

Haymitch looked at her closely, but her face was blank. "It snows a lot in Twelve," he said after a moment. "I'm sure they're used to it."

Effie clucked her tongue. "Of course it snows in Twelve," she said, as if everybody knew that. Although most Capitol people didn't, Haymitch was sure. "I meant - perhaps you should be advising them to think of ways to survive such an environment."

The tributes had insisted on being mentored separately - another good sign, in Haymitch's estimation. Neecee was sullen and resistant, flipping her shaggy bangs at him resentfully, but the boy listened carefully, and asked questions. Haymitch was afraid to hope. 

"Why don't you leave the mentoring to me, honey," Haymitch said, leaning forward to mess with the temperature controls in the car. The driver was an Avox, so he couldn't exactly scold him, but he did shoot Haymitch a grumpy look when he accidentally opened the skylight roof. "Saw you chatting up Jasper Whitesong. He's a looker, huh?"

Effie shot him a disgusted glance that actually seemed genuine. "He's a friend of mine from childhood," she said stiffly. 

"Old boyfriend?"

"Hardly." Her eyes narrowed. "It may come as a surprise to you, Mr. Abernathy, but there are men who are interested in what comes out of my mouth, rather than what's under my dress."

"Miss Trinket," Haymitch said, leaning back in his seat with a grin, "that was downright _vulgar._ "

"Well, when one is provoked," Effie said primly. "At any rate, we're not all that close anymore, certainly ever since he got married. His wife is the jealous type and we don't often have chances to catch up. He might give us some money though, if Birch does well in his interview tomorrow, but then again what do I know? Nothing under here but dust, isn't that what they say about me?" She adjusted her wig, moving it back and forth almost comically, and Haymitch snorted. She glanced at him with a small grin that looked almost pleased. "Not that I mind. It is the nature of my position, after all."

She wasn't saying anything dangerous, but Haymitch's grin still faded a little, if for no other reason than because she seemed to be making fun of herself to make him laugh. Dangerous for a different reason, probably. "You never heard me say such a thing."

"No, you are the very picture of a gentleman," Effie said dryly, with as much sarcasm as a human voice could possibly muster, and Haymitch couldn't help it - he laughed again. "You will talk to them, won't you? About snow?"

If she meant the double meaning to that phrase, it didn't show in her voice. The Avox could see and hear everything, so it wasn't like she was allowing her face to give anything away either, but her hands - Haymitch watched them clench together tightly in her lap, out of sight of the driver. He looked at them for a beat, and watched as she slowly unclenched her fingers, and turned them palm up, like a silent question. When he raised his eyes to meet her gaze again, she was watching him too. 

"I'll talk to them," he promised. She nodded like she heard what he was really saying. Haymitch was beginning to think she really did. 

It was their third year working together, and of course they lost. Neecee died beneath the talons of a muttated polar bear, and Birch bled to death from a wound he received trying to escape the Cornucopia. But at least nobody laughed at them - at least Haymitch had tried this time. He'd been right - it hadn't been any harder than Lunia. But at least this year people would give him the time of day at the market. 

She'd gotten better at hiding her horror, he noticed, and good thing too - they had guests on their floor to watch the Games, the Escort from Nine and her two Victors - Indigo and the one from the year before Haymitch, a cocky dust addict named Cypret. He wasn't sure why the fuck they were there until the Escort - the Hadriana that Effie was always nattering about - proceeded to politely gloat as their tributes died. Passive-aggressive rivalries were par for the course among the Escorts, but the venom from this particular woman felt personal. 

Haymitch didn't want any part of it, but he still had to sit there and listen to it. To her credit, Effie gave as good as she got, and she didn't let it show on her face. Indigo stuck close to him, her eyebrows climbing higher and higher on her forehead at the exchange until Haymitch finally got fed up and pulled her onto the roof for some fresh air. 

"Jesus," Indigo said, waiting until the heating unit switched on to talk, just for an extra layer of comfort. The ears were always peeled, on Games nights, you could never be too careful. "She talks a lot about how much she hates your new Escort, but that was intense. Did she steal a boyfriend from her or something?"

Haymitch shrugged. "Dunno," he said. "Don't care. You got any cigarettes?"

Indigo smirked at him, pulling a pack out of the back of her pants. "What'll you give me for it? A kiss?"

"Dream on, you're fuckin' ugly," Haymitch said, and she laughed at the old joke, shaking one out of its pack for him. "Sorry about your kids." 

Nine's tributes had died at the bloodbath. One of them had looked sickly; there was a pox ravaging District Nine that year. A lot of people were dying. "It was quick," Indigo said, scraping a piece of flint against the concrete ledge to light their cigarettes. "Yours weren't. Sorry."

"Yeah," Haymitch said. He didn't want to think about it. Birch had cried, at the end. "You heard from Chaff? Worried about him."

"He ain't doing great," Indigo said, with a sardonic twist to her mouth. Her teeth had scratched marks into her lipstick from where she'd been biting her lower lip, and there was smeared makeup on the back of her wrist. She was beautiful, which was more of a curse for a Victor than a blessing, but what Haymitch liked about her were the little things like that, the ways in which she allowed herself to be careless. "His sister, you know…" Her face darkened, and she shrugged. "I saw him yesterday, but I was on a _date_." Her voice was bitter. "Couldn't exactly talk to him."

Haymitch didn't reply. There was nothing to say, really. He couldn't make her feel better about her dates, just like neither of them could do much of anything for Chaff. 

"You think they knew each other from before?" Indigo asked, after a long moment. The holographic projection in the sky was playing the Games instead of the Poem that night, and her eyes were drawn to it despite herself, he noticed. No escaping it, no matter where they went. "Hadriana and...what's her name again?"

"Effie," Haymitch said. 

"Right." Indigo puffed on her cigarette, the smoke rising up around her head in a pale cloud. "Something Hadriana said today. She said 'she's always been like this.' But I didn't think they'd gotten to know each other yet. Yours has only been here for what, two years?"

"Like what?" Haymitch asked. He raised his eyebrow. "Effie's always been like what?"

"Self-righteous," Indigo said, and shrugged again. "At least, that's what Hadriana was complaining about. Kind of the pot calling the kettle black, if you ask me."

Haymitch thought about that for an uneasy moment, that specific word: self-righteous. "Indigo," he asked cautiously, "did you get to know Millie Everbreeze?"

"Wasn't fucking her, if that's what you're asking," Indigo said. 

"It's not." Haymitch watched her face carefully. He and Indigo were friends, but they weren't close, not like he and Chaff were. She'd never report on any of them - she certainly wasn't a deranged loyalist like Woof, or a desperate addict like Cypret - but he still couldn't be sure of her reaction. "I just was curious if you'd taken her temperature. If you know what I mean."

"You thinkin' about taking Effie's?" Indigo asked. She glanced over at him, her face just as cautious as his. They were relatively safe to talk, up there on the roof, but nobody was ever completely comfortable. "It's a bad idea, Haymitch. The Escorts…"

"I know about that."

She was quiet for a moment, thinking. "Millie was a good person," she finally said, blowing smoke up at the eerie moving picture in the sky. The screen was focused intently on a dying tribute, her silent cries looming large over the city. "Hadriana? Not so much."

"Got that impression, yeah." Haymitch didn't know what the point was, not of this conversation or of his current line of thinking, which was both stupid and pointless. They had all the Escorts pinned in place like dead butterflies - there was nothing he could do about it. Chaff had been right - getting close to one was asking for trouble. Trying to sympathize, be her friend - it'd probably just get them both killed. 

He couldn't stop thinking about her hands in the car, though. The way she'd fiddled with her wig, making herself look silly as a joke. He didn't know what it meant. He wasn't sure if she'd been trying to tell him something, or if that was just...the way she was, the moments in which her personality peeked out from underneath the fear. Nobody really was who they pretended to be, in the Capitol. Haymitch had started to take what little freedom he did have for granted - the understanding and friendship from Chaff and Indigo, the relative safety at the penthouse. It was a harsh reminder to him, to be faced with the reality of the Escorts' situation. Not worse than a Victor's - but not any safer, that was for sure. 

"You wanna fuck her?" Indigo asked crudely, interrupting his thoughts. Haymitch rolled his eyes at her. "You could do that. They encourage it, actually."

"I wonder why," Haymitch said dryly. 

"Well, as long as you keep the pillowtalk short and sweet, you'd probably be safe." Indigo shrugged. "They tie their tubes so they can't run off and have babies, grow consciences. They bug 'em up so they can't talk freely, so they stop having thoughts of their own, and the speeches become everything they are. Put 'em on TV constantly, never let 'em have a break. They turn them into holograms." Indigo's face was dark, and Haymitch wondered again how close she'd been to Millie. Closer than she'd let on before, clearly. "It's better for them, easier, if they just get there faster. If you encourage her to think for herself, you'll get her killed."

"You're a piece of work sometimes, Indigo," Haymitch said quietly. "Do you hear yourself?"

"Better a puppet than a corpse," Indigo shot back. "'Stay alive.' Isn't that your motto? Millie had sisters, you know. Little sisters. She used to cry herself to sleep at night; we could all hear it." Disgust flickered across her face. "I think Cypret turned her in."

"They would've killed her anyway. They were listening to all of it."

"Still." She flicked her cigarette away, watching the red glow of the tip as it sailed over the edge of the building. "She could survive it still, if she's smart. Find a husband or something, get out before she fucks up. Keep your mouth shut, Haymitch. It's the best you can do for her. If she's a decent person she'll do the same for you."

Haymitch finished his cigarette in silence, knowing that she thought he was being naive and wondering if she was right. The bitch of it was - he'd never had an Escort that seemed so genuinely distressed before. She was good at hiding it in front of the cameras, but when they were alone, actually watching the Games - she was absolutely stricken. And she let him see it. 

Was it better to not feel anything? Maybe. Haymitch had certainly been trying to get there for long enough at that point. But in the end, they would all be dead by the Capitol's hand, one way or another. He couldn't bring himself to regret that Effie still had enough heart in her chest to feel horror. 

"You're probably right," Haymitch said. Indigo nodded, her face distracted, watching the holograph in the sky. "If you see Chaff, would you tell him…"

"Yeah," Indigo said. "Same." She snorted. "If he lets you."

She clearly wasn't holding out much optimism. Not that Haymitch could blame her. 

Seneca Crane was a vain man, rumored to enjoy the company of men, although he seemed affectionate enough with his wife at the parties and public events. Haymitch steered clear of the Gamemakers whenever he could, but Effie seemed close with the Cranes in particular. It was common for Escorts to cozy up to them, to try and get hints or favors for their tributes, but Effie's affection seemed genuine. As far as he could tell, anyway. 

They'd settled into an affectionate distance with each other, as Haymitch liked to think of it - she didn't seem so skittish around him anymore, and he'd stopped walking on eggshells around her, which she seemed to appreciate. She'd taken to showing up at his house on Reaping days, to drag him out of bed and fuss over his clothes while he snapped at her like an angry turtle, and in return he cheerfully invaded her room on the trains, stealing the expensive liquor from her cold storage and propping up his dirty boots on her clean bedsheets. When they did talk, it was more like bickering - kind of fun, actually - but it was all so vapid and empty that Haymitch always forgot what it was they were fighting about the second he left her company. He could never be completely sure, of course, but he thought she felt the same. Sniping at each other felt comfortable - like a way to keep each other awake, sometimes. 

There was a run of Career wins over the course of three years - a pair of twins, which Capitol TV just ate up with a spoon, and the vicious Enobaria Whitesand, who had killed Twelve's tributes that year with a spiked mace. When Haymitch met her for the first time, at the opening ceremonies for the 63rd Hunger Games, she grinned at him with her golden teeth and said, "I love a good District underdog." She also stuck her hand down his pants while they were standing backstage, to which Haymitch reacted by spraining her wrist; the Peacekeepers had to physically separate them, but not before they both got a few good hits in. Needless to say, they weren't friends.

"Horrid girl," Effie said, clicking her tongue at the footage of Enobaria with her tributes that year. She'd clearly chosen a favorite, the seventeen-year-old boy with arms like an ox. The girl, clearly aware she'd been disfavored, looked dejected and grim. "They won't win. Not with Gloss' sister competing for One. She's charming, strong - and has her twin for a mentor! Unbeatable."

Twelve's tributes that year were both fourteen, belligerent and angry. It felt sick to be grateful when they were resentful or bratty, but it was easier not to get attached that way. Easier still when they didn't listen, because Haymitch could then brace for the inevitable, instead of fooling himself with false hope. "She'll still try her hardest," Haymitch said dryly, rubbing his shoulder with a wince. 

Effie eyed him, her expression a weird mixture of disdain and sympathy. "I really wish you'd allow me to take you to the Games clinic, Haymitch. They could do better for your shoulder there."

Enobaria had dislocated it during the fight; Haymitch had refused the offer of medical treatment and shoved it back into place himself, with the help of a reluctant, half-drunk Chaff. He was starting to suspect that he'd actually just made it worse - it was swollen, throbbing with even the lightest touch. "They won't be able to do anything for it but give me morphling, which I don't want."

"They could reset it," Effie said critically. "Look at you - you wince every time you move it!"

"It's fine," Haymitch snapped. She narrowed her eyes at him and turned away. "Shouldn't we be talking strategy? That's why I'm here, isn't it?"

"Oh, I thought you just enjoyed my company," Effie said snidely. He smirked at her, which got him a coy little smile in return. Her room at the penthouse was surely bugged and recorded, so Haymitch never felt quite at ease there - but the sniping was a bit of familiarity that felt like the closest he would ever get. "Alder and Kit are quite resistant. If you have an idea of how to get through to them, I'm all ears. Such poor manners." She clicked her tongue again. "They won't fare well in this year's arena with that attitude."

"You learn something from your threesome last night?" Haymitch asked. She glared at him. "What?"

"I had _dinner_ with Seneca and Acacia," Effie said. "And you know as well as I do that telling anyone even the smallest detail about the arena before the launch is _strictly_ prohibited. Hinting is one thing, but leaking actual details? The very thought!"

"Honey," Haymitch said with a laugh, reaching out for a refresh of his glass, "cheating's a golden tradition of the Games. Maybe they don't advertise it, but." He fumbled with the wine bottle, huffing in exasperation as she reached out with an annoyed air to refill his glass herself. His shoulder _really_ fucking hurt though; he didn't stop her. "Don't tell me they didn't let _anything_ slip."

Effie bit her lip, betraying her genuine nervousness. She had a few tells like that that Haymitch had picked up on; things she let him see when they were in relative privacy. She could never get away from the microphone in her neck, but there were a few places in the penthouse and on the train that cameras couldn't capture. She was a bit freer with her face and her hands in those moments. "Nothing substantial," she finally said, cautiously. Whatever it was she wanted to say, she was nervous about them hearing it. Haymitch focused more intently on her face, and she met his eyes for a moment that felt significant. "He's very curious about you. I was wondering if you'd be open to having dinner with him yourself. Perhaps tomorrow night, before the launch."

Haymitch frowned at her, confused, but she darted her eyes to the left, at the door where the Peacekeeper was standing. Haymitch was still under guard because of the fight; he probably wouldn't shake their presence until after the Games were over and he returned to Twelve. "A Gamemaker wants to have dinner with little 'ol me? Why - does he have a thing for drunks?"

" _Junior_ Gamemaker," Effie corrected. She looked over at the door again. "He lives in the Spire Apartments. Acacia - bless her heart - left for Two this morning to visit her sister. She's expecting, you know." Effie shook her head. "Poor thing."

A Capitol woman with family in the Districts? Haymitch blinked. "The Spire - that's that building by the Peacekeeper Memorial, with the - "

"Rotating top floor, yes," Effie said. "Marvelous views. Seneca's on the eightieth floor." She poured herself a small portion of wine into her empty teacup. She hadn't bothered to reach for a clean one - another tell. She made such a fuss about table manners and decorum, would throw an ear-shattering fit about an insulting seat placement or a rude waiter at a party - but in private she drank straight from his liquor bottles, leaned her elbows on the table, propped her heels up right next to his boots on the bed. Haymitch felt a burning sort of thrill every time she did it, like he was catching a glimpse of her naked body in a bathroom mirror. "Since our tributes don't seem to want your help this year, you'll have the time. I'll arrange for you to miss the sponsor's banquet; it shouldn't be an issue since you attended last year."

"He got a big dick or something?" Haymitch asked crudely, and Effie let out a shocked wheeze, choking on her mouthful of wine. He grinned at her in triumph. "I don't swing that way, kitten. No offense."

"You are...absolutely intolerable," Effie said through a gasp, and he laughed. " _No,_ Haymitch, I simply thought - well, that you would get along with each other, that's all. And would you _please_ watch your language in my presence. I know we are alone but that is all the more reason for you to keep the conversation appropriate!"

Haymitch very much fucking doubted that he would _get along_ with a Gamemaker, but something terribly stupid had happened to him over the last few years: he'd started to trust her. "Tomorrow night?" He took a generous gulp of the wine, rolling it around in his mouth before he swallowed. Effie always had good stuff in her room; he was starting to suspect she stocked it specifically for him. His favorites kept showing up, year after year. "You really think it'd be useful?"

"It's always useful to make connections," Effie said primly. She finished her wine gracefully, her fingernails clacking against the ceramic cup. The theme this year was deserts, red and yellow and gold; Enobaria's win two years ago in a red sand arena had started an annoyingly persistent trend. Effie's nails were yellow gold, and her hair was a deep crimson that brought out the depth of color in her green eyes. "Seneca is a very pleasant man, but he can be quite wicked at times. Not unlike you." The words felt loaded, although Haymitch could see that she was making an effort to seem casual, shrugging in her disaffected way, her gaze jumping around the room as if she were bored. "I suspect you'd have a lot more in common with him than you'd think."

"Hm. Maybe," Haymitch said, which of course meant that he would go. "I still don't swing that way, though. If he wants me for anything else he'll have to pay for me, just like everyone else."

"Don't flatter yourself," Effie said. She'd long stopped reacting to how he threw the prostitution in her face. If Haymitch was right about her, then she was probably following his lead by snapping back. He could tell it still bothered her, especially when they saw Indigo out and about with the Capitol men. "A man like Seneca doesn't have to pay for that sort of company."

"May we all be that lucky someday," Haymitch said, toasting the ceiling with his glass. 

"Indeed," Effie replied dryly. 

Haymitch was no stranger to these sort of nights - Sugar had been fairly aggressive in setting them up for him, dinners with rich couples who were thinking of sponsoring, or drinks with Gamemakers in training, whatever. Haymitch went along with it but he hadn't tried very hard, so her efforts were usually in vain; it was the only thing that would prompt her to actually speak to him, most of the time. 

Effie on the other hand mostly left him alone about that sort of thing; the only thing she nagged him about was mentoring, which in her opinion he could try harder at. (She wasn't wrong.) That she'd done this was significant - that she'd approached it like she had was significant. Presenting it to him like he would enjoy it, like she was trying to help him make a friend...it felt like she was trying to tell him something. Or maybe Haymitch was finally losing it - cracking up and blowing his load at the smallest bit of attention of a pretty Capitol woman who didn't seem like a complete monster. He wouldn't be the first to do that. 

The Cranes' apartment was a gaudy, ostentatious mess; shaped like a circle, in the motif of a medieval castle, there was an actual _moat_ of water that ran the edges of the living space, emptying down into a trellis that fed a fountain on the balcony of the floor below them. Haymitch had to walk over a literal _bridge_ to get into the apartment. 

"Haymitch Abernathy," Seneca greeted. His beard was shaved in a checkerboard pattern that Haymitch was trying hard not to stare at. "Lovely to finally meet you. Won't you have a drink? Effie told me you're partial to red wines."

"I like red wine," Haymitch agreed neutrally. An Avox took his coat and then disappeared, and the living room space was already decked out with appetizers, trays of canapes and pastries floating mid-air, suspected by some sort of magnetic serving apparatus. The lights were low and romantic; Haymitch shifted uncomfortably, second guessing Effie's motivations for probably the hundredth time that night. "I've heard a lot about you. And your wife, too. Effie speaks highly of Acacia."

The mention of his spouse didn't phase him. "They've gotten to be quite close, especially since my promotion. I'm glad you and I have an opportunity to meet, finally - I've tried to catch you at a few of the parties, but you're a hard man to pin down." He turned from the bar, smiling genially and handing Haymitch an octagon-shaped glass of wine. His hand didn't linger, though, and his gaze didn't drift downward, and Haymitch relaxed. A little, anyway. "I suppose that's understandable, though. To be the only mentor without another Victor - it must be a bit lonely, at all those events."

"I find company easily enough," Haymitch said. He looked around again, looking for the Avox, but she hadn't reappeared. "Not at the events, though."

"No, not a lot of friendships are born there. Rivalries, maybe," Seneca said with a laugh. He inclined his head towards the couch, which was intimidatingly large, dark blue leather with burnished gold accents. "Won't you have a seat? I hope you don't mind, but I've invited another guest to join us tonight. I would've told you ahead of time, but it was a bit last minute."

"Another guest?" Haymitch sat cautiously, thinking of a night ten years prior, during one of his first Games as a mentor. A rich, rather cruel woman had procured his company and then surprised him with her husband's presence. Not a great memory, to say the least. Also the source for his various and repeated bitter jokes about threesomes. "Effie said your wife was in Two."

"Yes," Seneca said, a bit dryly, clearly picking up what Haymitch was trying to do by bringing her up a second time. "Yes, she won't be back until next week. It's a friend of mine - a stylist. He's very busy this time of year, as you can imagine - only in his apprenticeship still, and they keep the assistants' schedules quite packed. So when he tells me he has some free time, I'm afraid I have to jump at the chance."

"Alright," Haymitch said slowly, trying to keep the wariness out of his voice. 

"He's very charming," Seneca urged, "you'll like him."

As if Seneca Crane had any idea of what sort of person Haymitch liked. Still, what choice did he have? He drank his wine and kept his mouth shut. That was the safest option, most of the time. 

The conversation was a bit stilted, of course, but Seneca was charming and talkative, and the wine was strong. Haymitch ate very little and drank three glasses, nodding along with the man's opinions and trying hard not to think about where the money for his dinner had come from. Halfway through the main course - the food was served to them right there on the couch on planks of wood, which Seneca had informed him was a new "rustic" trend inspired by a popular camping reality show - the mysterious _guest_ arrived, a young man in a sleek, silver overcoat and a delicate beaded headband across his forehead. He had darker skin than any other Capitol person Haymitch had met, but other than that he was Games through and through - dusted eyebrows, rings on every finger, and an airy, delicate way of speaking, as if the slightest rude word would topple him right over. His name was Cinna.

"Effie has told me a lot about you," he said, shaking Haymitch's hand with a surprisingly firm grip that contradicted his demeanor. Haymitch frowned at him. "She says you're one of the most honorable of the living Victors."

"Effie said that?" Haymitch said with a weird laugh. This was strange. Cinna arriving mid-meal, the way Seneca had gotten up to refill his glass almost immediately after Cinna sat down - no servants or Avoxes either - Haymitch felt on edge, like he was about to walk into a hunter's trap. "About me? You sure she didn't have me confused with someone else?"

"I do not think so," Cinna said, oddly gentle. He smiled. "I work with District Four currently. Mags is a lovely woman, of course, but Eff tells me you and she are the exceptions." Haymitch's eyebrows shot to the top of his forehead, and Cinna smirked. "Don't tell her I called her that behind her back. She'll kill me."

"You know her pretty well, huh," Haymitch said, eyeing him a second time. Cinna let himself be appraised, reaching out to casually take a grape from Seneca's plate, popping it in his mouth and chewing leisurely. "Must be difficult to get to know an Escort." He paused, gauging Cinna's reaction, which was only a slight lift of his eyebrow. "Considering their...visibility."

"To say the least," Cinna replied. He smiled at Haymitch in a conspiratorial way, almost playfully so. "There are ways around that, however. Even Escorts have private lives, after all."

"Are you implying _you_ are her private life?" Haymitch snorted. "Warning me away?"

"No. I'm trying to decide if she's right about you or not," Cinna said bluntly, and Haymitch went rigid on the couch. "Seneca - a refill for Haymitch here, yes? His glass looks a bit neglected."

"Perhaps some port," Seneca said, appearing again suddenly with a decanter of amber liquor in one hand. Haymitch eyed them both, suspicious and tense. "The Avox is gone," he said, as he poured three even portions into a set of fresh liquor glasses, bell-shaped this time with thick blue stones embedded in the bases. "We may talk freely."

"Freely," Haymitch repeated flatly. Cinna and Seneca exchanged a glance. "Look, I don't know what you're playing at here, but - "

"Haymitch, my apartment is not bugged," Seneca interrupted. He sat down across from them and leaned forward with his elbows on his knees. "I designed it myself. The magnets." He gestured at the serving device, then at the walls. "Small ones, installed everywhere to look like decoration. They interfere with radio listening devices. Snow told me himself he would allow it. He thinks I'm abusing Acacia, that I don't want him to have the blackmail material. I've given him enough dirt on me otherwise that I'm sure he sees it as a necessary concession."

Haymitch stared at him. "Are you fucking crazy?" he asked, after a long beat. He didn't touch his port glass. 

"It's true." Cinna chuckled gently, a genteel, musical sort of laugh. "Many rich Capitols have similar deals with the presidency. Plenty of rich husbands would rather keep their proclivities private. Or beneath the veil of privacy, anyway." He shrugged. "I understand if you cannot trust us at first. You don't have to say anything. You may simply listen."

"Listen to _what?_ " Haymitch narrowed his eyes at the stylist, who was swirling his port in his glass delicately. What they'd said already was enough to get them both killed. It was a shocking display of boldness. "Effie sent me here. She knows about this?"

"Yes," Cinna confirmed. "If you read her letters more carefully, perhaps you would have seen this coming."

Haymitch grabbed his glass angrily, knocking in back in one quick gulp. He'd seen Seneca pouring it from the same bottle, and both men had drank from it, which was not perfect safety, but better than nothing. "Great," he said, thinking of the letters. He hadn't thought to check them for...whatever it was Cinna was implying - codes? Hidden messages? If Effie had been trying to communicate with him on paper, in a way the Capitol couldn't track, did that mean - "what the fuck is this?"

"A friendly meal," Seneca said with a shrug, "between a few men of like minds."

"I have nothing in like with either of you," Haymitch said bitterly. "A Victor has nothing _in like_ with anyone."

"Yes," Cinna confirmed again, this time with a note of sadness. "They do that on purpose. Isolate you from the people of your District, so that you have no choice but to seek solace with the people of the Capitol. Sexual affairs, willing on your part or not, give you the air of complicity. And mentoring makes you a party to the Games. All of this makes it difficult for people in the Districts to feel solidarity with you, or to...listen to you, should the need ever arise."

"And for their children to heed your advice," Seneca said. His tone was neutral, exactly the same as it'd been when they'd been sharing vapid small talk at the beginning of this surreal evening. "Everything they do is twofold. Brilliant, really, in its cruelty."

Haymitch set his glass carefully down on the coffee table, mentally reviewing his options for escape. He could take Cinna easily, but Seneca was solidly built, and everyone knew the Gamemakers were trained in combat. They were on the ground in the Arenas during the construction process, in dangerous conditions. "What the fuck do you want from me," Haymitch said flatly. 

Cinna finished his glass, and reached out serenely for the bottle to refill. He topped up Haymitch's glass as well, without asking. "Effie and I have known each other a long time," he said after a moment, "from before she became an Escort. Her father and mine were friends." Another significant pause. "I begged her to sabotage herself somehow during the competition, but Agafya was her friend. You remember Agafya?"

"The runner up," Haymitch said. He thought again of the files from Caesar Flickerman, the names he'd chosen that had ended up in the finals. "I selected the names. I put her there."

"Yes, but," Cinna shrugged, "they would've put Effie in either way. Her father had certain...sympathies, you see." Cinna met Haymitch's eyes dead-on. "Making her an Escort was her punishment for her association with him."

Haymitch said nothing, simply drinking from his glass. His instincts were screaming at him to run, but he ignored them. 

"They killed Agafya a year after the competition. I don't know if you heard," Cinna said. "She was having an affair with a Peacekeeper from Seven. Somebody shot them both when they were in bed together, they made it look like murder-suicide. It was in the news as, oh I don't remember. Some tripe about violence from District people."

"A lovely woman, as I remember," said Seneca. "Effie was quite distressed about her death. Not that she could show it."

"Yeah, lots of telling not showing going on here," Haymitch interrupted snidely. "Neither of you have answered my question. What do you want from me?"

"Nothing in particular. It's simply useful to make connections," Cinna said, and Haymitch swung his head to stare at him, hearing the echo of Effie's words in the loaded silence. "Being old friends, Eff and I...she's working on getting me promoted to a lead stylist position. I understand that Twelve has a longstanding relationship with Ginger Lockhorn?"

Lead stylists were coveted positions, mostly because Escorts and Victors couldn't fire them. Ginger was lazy and uninspired, but nobody gave a shit about the tributes from Twelve anyway, which suited her just fine. Effie hadn't managed to get rid of her yet. "Four needs a new stylist, that woman you're working for is about to retire. Either that, or you'll end up at Six, they haven't found one that's stuck yet. Ginger won't leave just because you ask her nicely."

Cinna shrugged lazily. "Safer if I don't work with her anyway," he said. "They know our families were close. We've been discreet, but there are ears everywhere. Especially around Effie, as you're aware."

Haymitch wondered again if they were sleeping together. "Not sure I know what you mean by that," he said, looking over at Seneca, who was implacable as ever. "Listen gentlemen, I appreciate the ah, friendship offer? Or whatever it is you're offering here?" He gestured between them with his glass, his eyes narrowed. "But what you said earlier about trust...I haven't heard anything particularly convincing yet."

"We don't have anything convincing," Seneca said. He paused meaningfully. "Yet."

Haymitch laughed out loud at him. "No shit."

"We are a small group of friends, that's all," Cinna cut in smoothly, "Effie serves as our eyes and ears. Both ways, if you catch my meaning," he said. "Any bug we want in the presidency's ear - well, she's quite useful for that sort of thing. But Haymitch - do you mind if I call you Haymitch?" Cinna didn't wait for an answer. "We could always use more friends. In order to accomplish anything, we will need _many_ more, in fact."

"Accomplish what? Surely nothing that would betray the generosity of President Snow?" Haymitch asked dryly. "Working against the Capitol is treason, you know. Punishable by death."

"They'll kill us anyway," Seneca said flatly. He met Haymitch's eye, his glass of port forgotten on the table between them. "For something, eventually. Sooner or later. Wouldn't you rather it be for something honorable?"

"I'm not sure you know what honor is, Gamemaker," Haymitch countered pointedly. Seneca's flinch was subtle, just a twitch of his eyes, but Haymitch caught it. "Do you remember their names? I do. I could tell you every single one that died. From every fucking Arena, starting with _mine._ "

There was a tense silence, during which the only sound was the clinking of the glass in Haymitch's hand as he placed it back on the table. He saw them exchanging another look, and bit back another mocking laugh. 

"I have," Seneca finally said, stiffly as if he were struggling with the words as he said them, "no illusions. About myself." He leaned forward abruptly for his drink. "No illusions about my life, I assure you. I am not asking for your friendship, Mr. Abernathy. Or your forgiveness." He shook his head and took a long drink, and Haymitch appraised him for a minute, unconvinced.

"Not my place to forgive anything," Haymitch said with a scoff. 

"Indeed," Cinna said, with a graceful incline of his head. "You do what you can, what is in your power to do. As does Effie. If we are to be judged for our roles in this hellish spectacle, then it will be by a power with more authority than any President, that's for certain." He leaned in slightly in Haymitch's direction, making him tense up nervously, but Cinna didn't touch or gesture towards him at all. Just looked at him, long and meaningfully. "To act too soon would be to sacrifice ourselves for nothing. And it would condemn more tributes to endure mentors and Escorts who would only send them to their graves quicker. An opportunity will arise to do more, if we are lucky. But if it comes, and we are not ready...then everything is lost."

Haymitch held his gaze for a long minute, and then snorted. "Well, good fuckin' luck with that," he said, setting his glass on the table with a loud clink. "Thanks for the speech. And the dinner. I'm out."

"Mr. Abernathy," Seneca said quickly, but cut off abruptly at a sharp gesture from Cinna. 

"We understand," Cinna said, quickly rising to his feet. He offered his hand for another handshake, and against his better judgment, Haymitch gave him one. "Don't blame Effie. She had good intentions."

"Yeah?" Haymitch scoffed. "Dangerous fucking stuff. For anyone." He shook his head at both of them. "If you approach any of the other Victors with this bullshit, you'll both be dead. Even Chaff, you know."

"We know," Seneca said gravely. He was sitting rigidly in his seat, still staring at his glass.

"Thank you for the warning," Cinna said. He was the picture of courtesy, even as Haymitch was spitting in his face. He could see why Effie liked him. "The door remains open, Haymitch. On our side. Remember that."

"Sure," Haymitch said, waving his hand. His heart was beating so fast he could feel it in his throat, and at the pulse points in his wrists. "Don't hold your breath."

Cinna smiled at him, charming and enigmatic. "Simply crossing my fingers," he said dryly, raising his eyebrow. "Practically every day of my life."

"Yeah, I wish that worked," Haymitch said. 

He took the long way back to the penthouse, relishing the freedom from his Peacekeeper escort, as well as the opportunity to think. Effie had called in a favor to shake them early, on account of this dinner - another thing that should've raised his suspicions, probably. 

He was furious with her, more furious than he'd ever been before, but also he wasn't. He wanted to storm into her room and wrap his hands around her neck but he also sort of wanted to kiss her, which was a really fucking inconvenient thing to want. He was relieved and very intensely terrified. He wished he'd been wrong about her, because it would've meant that she was safer, but also he'd never been happier about being right before in his life. He was scared for her and scared _of_ her. Angry at her and angry on her behalf. It was a weird walk home. 

He found her on the roof, naturally. There was an open bottle of gin on the ledge next to her, and she was smoking a long, blue cigarette. Haymitch joined her at the concrete railing cautiously, noticing belatedly that there were two glasses on the ledge, only one of them lipstick-stained. She'd been waiting for him. 

"The children are asleep," she said, turning to smile at him warily. No cameras on the roof, but they could still hear, Haymitch reminded himself. Her face looked worried, almost gaunt. Most of her makeup had been wiped off. "I sneaked up here for a cigarette. Would you like one?"

"Just the drink is fine," Haymitch said, pouring himself a few fingers. "Thanks."

"How was dinner?" She was cheerful enough, he supposed. But her face was giving her away - she was worried it hadn't gone well. Worried that Haymitch would turn them in, he realized abruptly, and felt another surge of righteous anger. "I hope Seneca didn't...take you off guard."

"That's one word for it," Haymitch said with a sharp laugh. He saw her flinch in response, and without giving himself time to second guess himself, he reached out and touched her, laying his palm against her lower back. She turned and looked at him sharply, her hand faltering mid-motion as she was raising the cigarette to her lips. "It was fine. Good food, good port. Are you sure he's not an old boyfriend?"

"Seneca? Hardly," Effie said, eyeing him. She turned to look over her own shoulder, looking at the arm he had braced against her, and then turned back to the ledge, at the holograph in the sky. Tonight it was simply flashing a picture of President Snow, with scrolling text beneath his face that read, _Panem today. Panem tomorrow. Panem forever._ Haymitch glared at it. "Acacia and I are very good friends, you know."

"Hm," Haymitch said, drinking his gin. He was on the verge of actually drunk, rather than just regular drunk. He didn't trust himself to say much. 

"Haymitch." She twitched, beneath his hand. "Did you...make a connection?" She didn't look at him, and her fingers were trembling around her cigarette. Just lightly enough that she could probably blame it on the cold. 

"No, Effie," Haymitch said gently, sliding his hand up her back to her neck. She shuddered, trying to pull away, but he stepped closer and leaned his cheek against hers for a moment, a halfhearted hug that made her freeze in place, her false eyelashes fluttering anxiously. "I don't think...I made a great impression."

"Well," Effie said, her voice wavering, "try once, try try again! Seneca is a gracious man, I'm sure he'll give you another chance."

"I don't want to push our luck," Haymitch said carefully, squeezing her neck. He rubbed his thumb gently against the tense cord in her neck, and she made a small sound under her breath, almost a whimper. "Twelve's not a popular district, honey. You and I...we have to play the game carefully. You know what I mean? Trying to cozy up to the Gamemakers...if they catch on, it could mean disaster for us."

"I thought you said cheating was a golden tradition?" Effie asked. She turned her head beneath his hand, her eyes wide and plainative. "Don't you want...I mean, don't you…"

"Not yet," Haymitch said, shaking his head. He wondered how much the mic could pick up. If they could hear the rasp of his palm against her dress, if they could tell somehow that he was touching her, and that she was shaking because of it, leaning into his hand desperately as if nobody had touched her in years. "We bide our time. Wait for the right year...the right pair of tributes. Eventually, we'll get lucky. Sooner or later, it'll be our time."

"That's the spirit," Effie said shakily, taking a drag from her cigarette and closing her eyes, like she was gathering herself. "It's good to hear you taking a real interest, Haymitch. I was beginning to wonder if you'd...if you'd given up entirely."

"Not quite yet, sweetheart," Haymitch said tiredly, keeping his hand on her neck as he took a long pull from his glass. He could feel the lump at the base of her skull where the mic was embedded - a small, round object beneath her skin. She shuddered hard whenever he touched it. "I'm still in. Whatever that means." She took a shaky breath, the edge of her wig brushing his knuckles as she nodded.

They stood there for a long time, just drinking in silence. When she finished her cigarette, Effie threw it over the edge and the lit end sparked as it hit the forcefield. A tiny little flare of red and blue. 

"We should go back in," she said after a beat of silence. Haymitch's glass - and the bottle - was long since empty. 

"Big day tomorrow," he replied. Neither of them moved. 

When he went home that year he took her letters out - it took him a long time to find them, but he had kept most of them - and tried to decipher whatever message she'd been trying to send, but he couldn't figure it out. If it was coded language, Haymitch wasn't literate enough to figure it out - he was from the Seam, for fuck's sake. He'd stopped going to school when he was thirteen. A lot of people in Twelve still didn't know how to read; Haymitch was one of the lucky ones in that aspect, that his father had lived long enough for him to learn how to do that at least. 

He was smart in a different way, maybe. Haymitch felt like he spent a lot of his time trying _not_ to let himself think: about his family, about Juniper, about the tributes, about the people of Twelve - his people - who hated him for reasons that were at once both fair and unfair. The booze helped with that a little, but he didn't drink to forget - he drank to keep the nightmares away, which worked only sporadically. He drank to pass the time, and to keep himself distracted, because his brain was actually the hardest part of being awake sometimes. He couldn't stop it from running, thinking all the time, his thoughts always racing; he felt like he was being dragged along like a rider on a runaway horse most days. Anxious, depressed, sad, angry thoughts - what would happen if? What could've happened? What if he'd done that, what if he'd avoided this? Haymitch was thirty years old, and he felt like an old man. He felt like he'd seen the worst of the world a million times over, and each rotten thing he'd witnessed had stuck somewhere beneath his skin, growing rancid and toxic, like a tumor.

Effie, by contrast, sometimes seemed like a bare lightbulb that'd been dropped in the middle of his miserable life; a little too bright, a little too sharply illuminated that Haymitch sometimes had trouble looking directly at her. He didn't have any doubts anymore about her allegiances or her politics - setting up a meeting like that one would've been a death sentence if Haymitch had turned her in - and he didn't resent her for the things she had to do to survive. What was the point? Cinna was right about one thing - Haymitch had no room to judge. None of them did. Whatever was waiting for them when they closed their eyes for the last time would have the final say about blame. 

Was she a good person? Probably. Haymitch had a sense that she was, that the personality that he sometimes glimpsed in small snatches was a decent one. He thought, maybe, that she liked children. That she had a tender heart, that she was the type of woman who would've made a good mother, if she'd been allowed to be one. She took every death hard; he could tell. Her grief didn't do much of anything for those children, but - sometimes she could help them be less scared. Every now and then, her efforts made a tiny difference - helped them live a few minutes longer, survive just a little bit more. Didn't that mean something? Maybe. Maybe. 

She was younger than him, still just a girl of twenty-four, a little more vulnerable in the way that people tended to be before they'd really been hurt. Or maybe Haymitch was just projecting - but she certainly seemed vulnerable, certainly looked it whenever she cried over their tributes, desperately pressing both hands over her mouth so she wouldn't make any sound. Maybe that naivete was what allowed her to work with people like Cinna and Seneca, who were older themselves - and should know better, in Haymitch's opinion. It's not that he didn't _agree_ \- not that he didn't _want_ something better, but - what was the point? What was the _fucking point?_

Haymitch had no family left, no wife or children, no people he desperately loved, but there was always something they could do. They could kill Chaff. They could kill Indigo, or Mags, or Effie. They could torture them in front of him and Haymitch would break - he would. He knew he would. They could cut the already sparse food shipments to Twelve and tell them it was Haymitch's fault. They could double the reapings - triple them - take six children every year instead of two. Bring back the whippings. Triple the Peacekeeper presence. Starve half the District just to make a point. They could do _anything._

He tried folding the pages, holding them up to the light - nothing. Soaking them in water didn't reveal anything in special ink, neither did warming the page over the stove. Haymitch got frustrated quickly - especially when another letter came, the same sort of one she always sent in the winters, politely inquiring about his health and telling him she was looking forward to working with him again. Haymitch must've read that one a hundred times, searching for the hidden message, but he couldn't find it.

In a drunken fit of pique and frustration, he burned them all one night, thinking that even if he was too stupid to figure it out didn't mean that the Peacekeepers weren't. Then he wrote an angry reply to her, scolding her for being a reckless idiot who didn't take any of this seriously, who didn't understand what life was like outside her Capitol - just as dangerous there, yes, but did she ever go hungry at night? No. Did she have to watch her children get reaped? No. Did she ever have to risk the whip so that her family wouldn't starve to death? No. The Capitol was a harsh, unforgiving place, but at least she had a warm bed and plenty of food to eat. Effie and her fucking _manners_ \- it drove Haymitch up the wall, sometimes.

He burned that letter too, of course. He waited until every scrap of paper was ash, and then he drank until he passed out on the living room floor, thinking about Juniper, about her beautiful long hair that Haymitch used to wrap around his knuckles when they lay in the Meadow together. Her temper and the scar on her knee and the way she smiled whenever they walked past the Mayor's house and caught a glimpse of their cat. Miles away from Effie Trinket, who Haymitch didn't even _know._ Effie Trinket was a person that Haymitch had never met, not really. Effie was - something, she was nothing, she may have had a temper but Haymitch had never seen it, never heard her talk honestly and truly, never seen her bare of the costumes - he didn't even know what color her hair actually _was._ Juniper was a woman he'd loved - a real woman, a woman he'd talked to every day and shared secrets with. Effie was...what? Effie was a foolish dream. A stupid dream. Effie was going to get him killed. 

Hopefully sooner rather than later, Haymitch thought sometimes. He wasn't sure how much longer he could put up with all of it. 

The years would pass like days, if Haymitch wasn't careful. Sometimes he was, sometimes he wasn't. Some years he tried, and others he couldn't bear it. They all died in the end, and the people of Twelve didn't notice the difference anymore. 

Effie remembered all their names when he couldn't, when he called a boy by the wrong name because his mind was stuck on another tribute that was long dead. She smoothed over his rough edges, made apologies for him, kept the children distracted sometimes when he needed to get away from it. An unspoken language arose between them that was probably very stupid, and certainly dangerous, but how else could they get through it? How else could they manage to keep themselves upright? Haymitch didn't know. Everything was dangerous, anyway. What did it even matter?

He'd figured out her written code eventually - it was so simple, no wonder he'd missed it - the ink was smeared on certain words that always combined to convey a simple message, usually garbled and straightforward: _you heath good?_ or _cautious Capitol angry!_ Whatever short sentence she could actually say to him - he treasured it, in his way. Haymitch regretted throwing the earlier letters out, now that he knew how to decipher them; he'd probably never know what she'd been saying to him back then. 

When she was angry with him, truly angry and not just blustering about his clothes or his language like she did for the benefit of the children and the cameras, she would tap her fingernails against the surface of something, like a warning, and Haymitch would pause in the middle of whatever he was saying to rethink. When she wanted his focus on something, she'd wear something in her wig - a flower or a pin or something - and touch it conspicuously at certain times, to draw his attention to whatever it was she was concerned about. When she worried for him she would leave a bottle in his room, something expensive he couldn't get on his own. When she needed comfort she would ask him if he'd like a cigarette, and they'd go up to the roof together and smoke in silence, holding hands and touching as much as they dared. 

It was a sort of friendship, close but not exactly, because nothing they said was really what they meant, and everything they meant could never be said. Haymitch had his own signals for her, and he was sure she'd figured some of them out - others that he tried she seemed oblivious to, because of course they couldn't read each other's minds and it was difficult to work out codes with someone you could never actually talk to. He was sure that there were some that she was trying that he never picked up on. They couldn't risk writing each other notes, because everywhere they went was filmed, _everything_ was on camera. Even the letters were risky, since Haymitch knew for a fact that his mail was searched; they weren't even subtle about it anymore. It was slow going, to say the least. 

He wondered so many things about her, things he wanted to ask but probably never could. Who Agafya was to her, and why Effie had been so willing to take the bullet for her even when she had to have known that Agafya's Peacekeeper lover would doom her anyway. Or did Effie not know about him? Were she and Agafya lovers, and the Peacekeeper was simply the rebound, the consolation prize? Or were they more like sisters? Was Effie truly sacrificing herself for Agafya's sake, or was Cinna right in that they would've chosen her anyway because of her father? Sometimes, they would play reruns of Effie's Escort competition on television, and Haymitch would rewatch the scenes between the two women - years ago, now - and burn with curiosity. 

What did her father do to get himself killed? If he'd truly acted against the Capitol in the way that Seneca and Cinna seemed to be attempting, they would've made a splashy example of him - and Effie never would've survived, either. They'd have killed her just to be sure. But to make her an Escort - what kind of punishment was that? More like a reminder, Haymitch thought. Dangerous ideas that they wanted to burn out of her. And if her father was dead, what was the point of turning her into a talking doll and putting her on television, unless there was someone still alive to see the example they made of her? Friends, maybe. Extended family that the Capitol suspected still lived, somewhere in Panem? A rebel cell that they knew existed, but couldn't find. Maybe Effie was their perpetual message to the anonymous freedom fighters they couldn't find: _we're still looking for you._

Were Cinna and Seneca the men they were looking for? Maybe. There were others that Haymitch noticed, now that he knew enough to look for them: another stylist named Portia, who stuck close to Cinna at the events and lingered a little too long with Acacia Crane at the banquets at the Training Center. Avoxes who passed Effie notes sometimes, little slips of paper that he caught her burning in the fireplace when the Peacekeepers weren't looking. A bird-faced woman named Lucretia Plinth, an executive for Capitol TV, who always gave Haymitch a slow, too-obvious onceover when she saw him at parties. The Plinths were well known as family friends of Snow's; the implications - and risks - of that made Haymitch's stomach curdle with dread.

And Finnick Odair, to Haymitch's surprise. Young, beautiful Finnick, who was already starting to falter beneath the heavy weight of the Capitol's favor. One late night, at a reception for One's retiring Escort, he caught Haymitch at one of the lone blindspots in the ballroom of the Seafoam Tower - not one of the well-known blindspots that the other Victors knew about; Haymitch had thought he was the only one who knew about this one. He'd spent a lot of parties and banquets lingering in this particular corner. 

"That's how I figured it out, obviously," Finnick said. The look on his face was arrogant, lazy - he looked like he was indulging Haymitch's conversation instead of the other way around - but his tone was serious, deferential. He obviously wanted Haymitch to like him, which made Haymitch feel tense and wary. "I knew there had to be a reason why you always stood here for so long. It couldn't just be that you liked the artwork." 

He nodded at the painting above their heads, a landscape of the bombing of Thirteen. It was gaudy, the entire ugly event painted in pastel colors with weird, surrealistic swoops and swirls. The bombs were elongated into weird shapes; the dying soldiers on the ground were stylized, cartoonish. Haymitch snorted. "No," he said. He took the drink Finnick offered, a silent signal to allow the boy to talk. "Didn't think I was being _that_ obvious."

"You weren't," Finnick said hastily. "Just wanted to find a spot to talk to you. I was being creepy." He smiled, reminding Haymitch of his interviews - charming and a little bit sneering. "You're a hard man to get to know. Even Chaff was easier."

"You're picking the wrong Victors to make friends with," Haymitch said with a snort. "Old Chaff and I - we're drunks. Not much use for us, for a boy like you."

"I'm not a boy," Finnick said, a little angrier than Haymitch figured he intended to sound, since he flinched right away, his tone immediately softening in apology. "And you can never have enough friends, in my opinion. Mags says you're a good person."

Haymitch sobered. "Mags is the only one of us who's good."

"Won't argue with that." Finnick was dressed in a green suit with seashells in his hair - they always put him in blues and greens, obnoxious merman themed stuff. As Haymitch eyed him, he shifted his posture, moving his shoulders to readjust the jacket of the suit without touching it. "My stylist, Cinna - he says you're a good person, too."

Haymitch looked at him sharply. "Don't know Cinna that well," he said. 

"Yeah. He says you were a little reluctant to make friends." Finnick smiled. "I'm persistent, though."

"Like I said," Haymitch said, eyeing the crowd with caution, frowning at the boy in warning, "I'm not much use to you as a friend. Try some people your own age, maybe."

"What's that old saying? With age comes wisdom. Or - no, I remember now. 'Age isn't a guarantee of wisdom, but the years certainly give you an advantage in finding it.' Or something like that." Finnick drank from his wine goblet, looking absurdly young. He was only just sixteen - still Reaping age. A rarity among Victors - most of those who won were almost always older, by virtue of what the Games required of them. Seventeen or eighteen. By the time they became mentors, they were adults. Legally, anyway. "It doesn't require much effort from you, you know. If that's what you're worried about." Finnick flashed him a grin. "It's enough for me if you just indulge me. Bare minimum is all I hope for."

Haymitch sighed. "Look, kid - "

"Not a kid," Finnick interrupted blandly. 

Haymitch didn't dignify that with a response. "You got family back in Four?"

"No." Finnick sobered. "Some friends. It's hard to be apart from them, but Mags...helped me deal with that."

If she'd warned Finnick not to let on who he gave a shit about, that was good, but - there was always the chance he'd fuck up. Nothing and nobody was ever safe. "You should just stick with them," Haymitch said, making eye contact so the boy would understand what he was saying. "People you have more in common with. You don't need old, reckless drunks in your ear. You catch my meaning?" Finnick's expression was blank, but his hand had tightened around his glass. "You never know how much time you have. You oughta spend as much of it with them as you can - it's difficult to be a Victor. There's always the chance that you'll...grow apart."

Finnick drank from his glass, pausing in contemplative silence, before he replied. "What if that's why I need people like you?" he said. "It's hard, when they don't really understand what it is. What life is really like, here in the Capitol." Finnick turned his head and caught Haymitch's eye. "I just could use some help every once in a while. We all could."

"You don't need my help," Haymitch said. He thought about Cecelia from Eight, who'd married her sweetheart the second her Victory Tour ended. They had babies on the way - twins. Whatever she'd done, whatever she'd agreed to in exchange for their safety, Haymitch didn't want to know. She stayed far away from them all, only came to the Capitol when she absolutely had to, left the mentoring to Woof's dubious efforts. And Mags gave her a wide, wide berth, which was telling in and of itself.

He hadn't spoken to Chaff in any real capacity since before his sister died; they drank together occasionally, kept company at the parties, but Chaff no longer joined Haymitch on the roof, and he wasn't talking to Indigo, either. Mags hadn't given Haymitch the time of day since the year that he'd turned down Cinna and Seneca - something Haymitch was irritated to see the significance of - and Indigo was on something, it was becoming increasingly clear. Morphling or dust, or _something_ \- it'd been a long time since Haymitch had talked to her properly too. She'd moved to the city permanently, got an apartment somewhere paid for by one of her dates, stopped going home in the winters. Bags under her eyes, loose talk in places she shouldn't be talking - this year during the interviews she'd started laughing in the middle of the recap with a manic glint in her eyes; they'd had to rush her off stage. It was hard to watch. 

The Capitol was always a lonely place, lonelier still without anyone to talk to, but at least Haymitch had Effie. If that really counted as talking. 

"Okay. Fine. Fine," Haymitch said in resignation, reaching out to clasp Finnick's shoulder. The kid immediately broke out into a blinding smile. "If you have a problem - a _real_ problem - you come to me. I'll do what I can. You stay away from the Careers, do you hear me?" He looked Finnick in the eye. "And my Escort, too. You keep her out of it."

"Effie?" Finnick blinked, and his face changed slightly. "She's...friends with Cinna," he said haltingly. 

"I know. But she's got enough on her plate. You understand what I mean?" Finnick nodded, glancing curiously at Haymitch's face, which made him scowl and push the kid away, his skin itching like he'd given away too much. "Tell your _friends_ I said that, if you like. Leave her alone - she does enough as it is. Tell them I said exactly that, Finnick."

"Alright," Finnick said, wiping the curious look off his face in favor of a bland, charming smile. "Thanks, Haymitch. I appreciate it. Knew I'd wear you down." Finnick knocked their elbows together, a quirk that people from Four were known for. "Should I tell Cinna you're ready for his transfer? He's been talking about asking for Twelve since last year. He really hates that Ginger woman."

"Don't push it, kid," Haymitch said. 

Effie was dodgy around him for days afterwards, shooting him sideways glances when she thought he wasn't looking. What he'd said to Finnick had made it back to her, Haymitch figured - whether through those notes from the Avoxes, or some other way she had of communicating with them that she hadn't shared with him yet. He'd been watching her for a while, since the meeting, trying to catch her in the act, but of course she was too slippery for him. And she was very, very used to being watched. Even the notes were disguised as business correspondence, and whatever code she was using was a bit more complex than smudged words, Haymitch would bet. 

Their tributes were young again - it'd been a few years since they'd had any older than fourteen. Haymitch and Effie watched the recaps of their interviews in somber silence, drinking spiced whiskey in the penthouse's kitchen. Effie had taken her shoes off, and was sitting on the edge of the kitchen chair, pushing her feet into the side of the cabinet next to his knee, her toes turning white with the pressure. 

He wanted to ask her if all the Reapings were rigged, if she thought they were picking sickly, young tributes for Twelve because it kept them out of the way, kept them the laughingstock of the Games. Mayors certainly did it all the time. There'd been rumors for years about the Escort from Three and the Mayor there, that they had some sort of agreement to plan out who would get reaped beforehand, mostly because of the suspicious coincidence of the children of the Mayor's political enemies getting reaped, year after year after year. And of course the Mayor before Undersee had been a corrupt, bloated old goat, he'd tried to bribe Delta enough times in Haymitch's earshot. But did the Capitol interfere? It was naive to think otherwise. 

It was a tossup if they would tell her. An Escort like Delta would've known - they would've included her in all the dirty details, and she would've participated gladly. But Effie had started playing it so stupid that Haymitch himself wasn't sure, at times, if she really understood what was going on. He doubted they took her seriously, which was the safest way for her to be. He didn't want to make it harder for her. 

"Cinna has made another petition to dress our tributes," Effie said, a little out of the blue. The television had moved on from the interviews to a rerun of last year's Games, but they were still standing there watching blankly, enshrouded in the grimness of it together. "I spoke with Ginger. She seems open to the idea of retirement. I might be able to convince her to allow him to assist her this year, with the understanding that he would take over as the lead stylist next year."

"No," Haymitch said. "We've already done the Chariot and the interviews. What's left for him to do?"

"Should one of them win - "

Haymitch scoffed. 

" _Should_ one of them win," Effie continued brightly, although her grip tightened on her glass, "he would have a great deal to do, Haymitch. I think it's a good idea."

Haymitch was quiet for a long minute, watching the TV without really seeing it. "Not this year," he finally said. 

Effie let out a frustrated noise and Haymitch looked at her, startled. "You've been saying that for three years."

"And I meant it every time, kitten," Haymitch said. He nudged her foot with his knee warningly. 

"You always call me that," Effie said, nudging him back. "It's insulting. I am not a cat."

"You kinda look like a cat, with that eye makeup."

Her dresses that year were complex and appallingly mouth watering; Haymitch was having trouble looking at her. Green was the color _du jour_ \- Finnick's popularity still a stubborn influence - and she wore long sheath gowns with complicated cut-outs down the bodice that bared her skin in little curlicue and spiral shapes, with makeup that was just as dramatic and bold to match. Her wigs were straight again - Haymitch preferred those over the curly ones - and alternated between jeweled tones of blue and purple. Haymitch's hands itched to take them off; he wanted to know what her hair really looked like. Probably more than he'd ever wanted anything, in a long time. 

"Oh, I do hope this trend fades quickly," Effie said, affecting an airy tone that after all these years, Haymitch could tell was very fake. "It's dreadful taking all this off every night, you really have no idea."

"No, I really don't," he said dryly. There had to be cameras everywhere in the penthouse, but Haymitch was a little drunk and getting more reckless by the year. He shifted sideways where he was leaning against the counter, pretending to reach for the bottle but really using the excuse to press his leg against her foot. Her eyes darted up to his face and then fluttered away again, and the bare bone of her ankle flexed against his shin as she straightened out her leg, pressing her foot flat to the side of the cupboard. "That boyfriend of yours must like it, though."

"I don't have a boyfriend," she said. Haymitch eyed her over the rim of his glass; she'd been paraded around the city with the son of Snow's communication Minister for months. The photos had been all over television. "Otho and I are simply good friends."

His jealousy aside, he would've preferred if it was real. He couldn't spare her everything - couldn't even spare her most things. Haymitch pressed his knee a little harder against her foot. "You looked good together," he said quietly.

Her face twisted. "He's a gentleman," she said simply, angling her face a bit strangely and stretching, pressing her chin against the angle of her shoulder. Haymitch wondered bleakly if that meant she was trying to say that she didn't have to fuck him. He couldn't be sure. "Unlike some other people I could name." She looked at him, catching his eye significantly, and then angled her chin up at the far corner of the room, before righting her posture and looking back down at her glass. _The camera_ , Haymitch thought. 

"You wouldn't know what to do with me if I were a gentleman," Haymitch said. Even if it had a wide lens, the most it could capture was her back - she'd made sure to keep her face turned away from it. Haymitch felt his heartbeat quicken as he realized she probably did that a lot - every room they were in where she showed him her real expressions, she'd actually been telling him where the cameras were, and he hadn't picked up on it. "You need a little rough in your life. Someone to keep you disheveled, so your corset strings don't choke you to death."

"Why, I never," Effie said, her tone the picture of offense, but she had the biggest grin on her face. Her foot moved a little, creeping up his leg, and Haymitch tensed. She raised an eyebrow, asking without words, and he relaxed again, glancing again at the camera. He needn't have worried - all she did was lean her foot against the top of his knee, a familiar weight after countless nights on the couch, her legs resting on top of his beneath the coffee table. "If you're going to speak to me like that I might as well just leave."

"Speak to you like what?" Haymitch said, putting a dopey look on his face. Effie muffled a laugh against her wrist. "Sorry, I'm just drunk. You want a smoke?" He took a swig from the bottle and then leaned over to place it on the table, taking the opportunity to run his knuckles up her leg, beneath the table where the camera wouldn't see. Effie inhaled sharply, her eyelids snapping shut, a deep shudder running through her shoulders. "It's nice out tonight. I could use one myself."

"We shouldn't stay up too late," Effie said reluctantly, but Haymitch saw her reach automatically for the side pocket of her dress, hidden beneath the ruched fabric. Her cigarette case was never far from her hands, no matter what she was wearing. "It's a big, big day tomorrow! I'd like to try and get the children up early."

"Just one," Haymitch said. He wanted to touch her where nobody could see. If he couldn't have her at all, if he had to watch other men put their hands on her all winter long, the least she could do would be to let him stand next to her on the roof and run his palms down her back. 

Sometimes when they felt brave he would even lean his head against her shoulder, pressing his face against her warm neck. She'd go soft and sweet in those moments, shivering beneath him, holding her arm around his shoulders delicately like a sweet-smelling garland of flowers. Haymitch dreamt of gardens on the nights that he passed out thinking about her - white-yellow plumeria, purple orchid, deep red hibiscus. He imagined, sometimes, touching her - _really_ touching her - and watching as her skin turned to petals beneath his hands. Her hair, beneath those fucking wigs, would be the color of the golden sunset, and when he'd run his fingers through it, it would be as warm and soft as the grass beneath his feet. 

"Come on, kitten." He moved his leg so it was touching her foot again. "It's early, still."

"Well, I suppose you did apologize," Effie said, as if there were any question that she would say yes. She stayed sitting there for a second, looking up at him with those beautiful, Capitol blue eyes, and Haymitch thought in a rush of painful honesty: _you're the worst thing that ever happened to me._ Then, in the next second: _I'd be dead without you._ "Bring the bottle?"

Haymitch swallowed thickly. "Whatever you want," he said, trying for sardonic and missing it by a mile. 

Years, in this fashion. Sometimes it felt like decades. Haymitch felt old the day his family died, but it was always possible to feel older. It never got easier, it never got safer. The children kept getting younger and younger, even if their ages were technically the same. Haymitch turned thirty-six on the day that Annie Cresta survived her Arena, but that year would be memorable for him and Effie for a different reason, because their sixteen-year-old female tribute was pregnant when she was Reaped. 

Effie tried to get her disqualified, had pulled in every favor, but of course it didn't work. The Presidency didn't care, of course, and the Gamemakers would rather keep it off camera since the star of that year was a fierce beauty from Seven who made a big show at her interview about a sweetheart back home. Plum, by contrast, was grey-faced and quiet, uttering not a single word in her interview, looking stone-faced at the cameras as even Caesar Flickerman scrambled to keep up his charm. Effie was beside herself; none of them knew what to do.

Cinna showed up without permission with a dress that looked more like a wedding gown, all crinoline and angelic lace, and Haymitch didn't have the stomach to turn him away. It wouldn't work. He knew it wouldn't work, because Plum refused to _speak,_ and in fact refused to do much of anything at all. She walked dead-eyed through the training days, stared straight at Effie and didn't say a word when she attempted to engage her in conversation. And their male tribute - a fifteen-year-old Seam boy with a limp - just shuddered by himself next to her, curled up at the dining tables with his arms around his stomach, not touching a single bite of food. It was fucking dismal.

"The only way we're going to leverage this is if we _tell_ people," Haymitch tried, a last-ditch effort on the night before the launch. Plum stared over his shoulder, unseeing. "I can't tell them for you, sweetheart. Neither can Effie - they won't let us. But they can't control what you say when you're in there! Only you are in charge of that, once you hit the ground. Do you hear me? The cameras are gonna be on you in the Arena - you have to _say_ it. Talk to your boyfriend, tell him on air. Make them feel sorry for you, goddamn it - it'll _help._ "

Plum just breathed heavily, still staring into the middle distance. Haymitch wondered if she was even hearing him. 

"What about your child?" He grabbed her chin and forced her to look at him. "You're a mother, you selfish girl. Whether you wanted it or not, there's another life inside of you right now. And if you don't wake the fuck up and fight for it, you're _both_ gonna get killed tomorrow."

At this, Plum finally reacted - a tightening of her eyebrows, almost a frown. Haymitch waited for her to say something - he knew she _could_ talk, she'd been normal enough the first few days - but nothing came. 

"I can't help you if you're just walking in there to die," Haymitch told her seriously. "You want that? Huh? The least you could do is give them a show, then. Make Twelve look good, give Cam a fighting chance for sponsors." Plum angled her eyes away again, her face growing blank, and Haymitch let her go with an angry sigh. "Fine." He rose to his feet, scraping the bottom of his brain for something else to say - but there was nothing. Nothing he could say. She knew it as well as he did. "Fine."

When he reached the door, he heard her make a sound. Haymitch stopped, looking at her hesitantly, and she raised her chin and met his eyes. She was pretty - daughter of the textile traders, as well-fed as a kid could be in Twelve - light coloring, fair hair, like all the townspeople. He'd stopped comparing their faces to Juniper's long ago, but something in her eyes reminded him of her in that moment - the way she'd looked the night after he'd returned from the Capitol, maybe. That terrible sadness in her face that he knew would never go away. "I said no."

"Sorry?" Haymitch said. Plum just stared at him. "I don't know what that means, kid."

"I said _no,_ " Plum repeated, and then turned her face away. Haymitch stared at her for a long moment, his stomach rolling. He still couldn't think of anything to say. The words still didn't exist. 

She died about five minutes after the launch. She stepped right off the pad and stood stock still in the middle of the meadow, her arms outstretched, eyes closed. Haymitch cursed at the screen when a Career from Two casually stabbed her in the neck on his way towards the Cornucopia. Plum didn't make a sound as she died, and Haymitch realized later that she hadn't said a single fucking word on camera. Not even one. 

Effie was dry-eyed and grim about it, but her hands shook that whole day, and she went to bed early, shaking her head silently when he asked her if she wanted a cigarette. It was Cinna who joined him on the roof that night instead - with a pair of chocolate flavored cigarettes that came from a cobalt blue case. 

"It was a good tactic," he said, after a long moment. Haymitch smoked his fucking candy cigarette and didn't say a word, too furious to speak. "It would've worked, if she'd been willing to fight. But it wasn't your fault that she gave up. She was too young - too much pain."

Haymitch exhaled in the direction of the forcefield, watching as it bounced back towards them in a curling pancake of smoke. "She still wouldn't have won."

"No, probably not," Cinna said quietly. 

Haymitch had been thinking about it constantly, since the day of the Reaping, when Effie called out the name of the girl that everyone in Twelve had been talking about already. That Plum girl, they'd said, who got herself in trouble. Her mother kicked her out of the house, she's been staying with Greasy Sae. Disrespectful little thing, won't even look her father in the eye. 

"It wouldn't have worked with her," Cinna continued, smoking more gracefully than Haymitch, holding the cigarette with his thumb and index finger and his hand turned upwards, like he's studying it. "It would've been sad, yes. Plum was a sad girl. But it wouldn't have saved her. The audience...they need to feel betrayed by the Gamemakers for it to work. All these years, they've been fed the lie that it's fair. That each child has an equal shot." Cinna shot him a sideways look. "We all know that's not true. But _they_ don't."

"What does that matter?" Haymitch asked, through numb lips. 

Cinna looked away again, and Haymitch thought of that dinner, years before, when he'd turned them down flat to their face. Finnick never did come to him with a problem, but he gave Haymitch certain looks sometimes, like he wanted to say something but couldn't. "You know why it matters," Cinna said, refusing to indulge him. "The same reason you keep refusing my application for Twelve. We'll know it when it comes. I'm not offended."

"Offended?"

Cinna smirked, but it looked more sad than smug. "As I said, Haymitch," he replied, finishing his cigarette, "the door remains open."

"We'll be waiting until we die," Haymitch told him, leaning hard against the balcony. Cam had died too, obviously, but Haymitch would remember Plum's face more than his. Maybe that was unfair, but he couldn't help it. "We'll just be waiting and waiting until they kill us. And they will kill us. One way or another, isn't that what Crane said?"

"What other choice do we have?" Cinna asked, a question that didn't really have an answer. He reached out and squeezed Haymitch's shoulder, causing him to startle, and Haymitch realized it'd been a long time since anyone but Effie had touched him. 

Haymitch snorted, turning away, back towards the hologram of the Games in the sky. Annie Cresta was holding onto a tree branch, shaking and shivering but holding her own among the waves, while the Careers from Two and Three tried desperately to stay afloat in the water. "Dead is dead. What's the difference?"

"I don't know," Cinna said. He let his hand fall from Haymitch's shoulder slowly. "If your heart is dead, then I suppose there isn't one."

Haymitch thought of Juniper again, and his fury was still so deep he could feel it in his bones, spreading up through his body like a cancer. It never really went away - it just settled into him, like dust in the cracks in your hands. "Whose heart isn't, in this motherfucking place?"

"Good point," Cinna said with a sigh. They didn't talk again. 

The Capitol was an opulent place, but there was poverty and misery everywhere in this world, it seemed like - Haymitch was well acquainted with the parts of the city that they didn't show on television. There were bars and underground casinos and black markets, just like in the Districts. Chaff took him to a brothel on the very edge of the city when he was seventeen, so he wouldn't have to lose his virginity to a sponsor twenty years older than him. There was an orphanage attached to the Academy, rumored to be the Capitol's main source for Avoxes in the years since the crime rates dropped. And beneath the city there was a network of old tunnels leftover from before the Dark Days, when the city's sewage was funneled beneath the streets. Plenty of people down there, although nobody was supposed to know. Runaway Avoxes, homeless people, criminals from the debtors' prisons - escape rates were high, the Peacekeepers didn't care enough to chase them for very long anymore, not since the Games had become the Capitol's main source of income. But everyone could tell when somebody really important had escaped - the Peacekeeper presence on the streets tripled, and Capitol TV would start running those safety announcements about the old sewer grates again. They always warned about rats that sneaked into the city from the Districts, carrying rabies - but of course everyone knew that by "rats" what they really meant was "poor people."

Haymitch had thought a thousand times of escaping. He knew how to do it, he could slip away easily enough. He was a Quell Victor, he had money and friends, his movements weren't restricted when he was in the city, and there were always ways to avoid the cameras. There was plenty of wilderness out there to disappear into as well - between the Capitol and Twelve there was nothing but miles and miles of empty land, burned out husks of cities that nobody cared enough to pay attention to, dead areas that the Capitol's hovercrafts couldn't fly over because of the magnetism in the soil. The propaganda kept most people from running - terrible stories on the news every night about mutilated corpses found outside the bounds of the fences, cannibals that roamed the hills, beasts mutated by radiation into monsters. And worse than _that_ \- emptiness. There was nothing beyond the borders of Panem - no people, no civilization. No trustworthy food source, no water you could drink without becoming ill. A war-torn wasteland that was, of course, the fault of the rebels of District Thirteen. Their bombs had killed the world, and poisoned the land outside. The only life to be lived was in Panem, and the Capitol's rules would keep you safe. 

It was all bullshit. Haymitch had lived in and among the upper levels of Capitol society long enough to recognize that most of them knew it was false, too. They were rich, spoiled, and strung out on designer drugs or sex or whatever - anything to keep their eyes and hearts numb - but they weren't stupid. There was radiation from the bombs, yes, but it was the hurricanes and tsunamis that had originally driven people inland, not the war. And war was war - why had the rebels started it in the first place? Because the Capitol's rule was _too fair?_ No. The Hunger Games were a way to keep control over a nation that was too large and spread out to control through military force, to keep reminding them of who was in charge - it had nothing to do with symbolic punishment for a war almost a century old, although that certainly helped make the propos more effective. To make the Capitol hate the Districts, to make the Districts hate the Capitol. It's not as if they were subtle about it. 

Haymitch had gotten by for twenty years by being as uninteresting and pathetic as possible, and it worked to an extent. He never brought any of his tributes home, but for as long as Twelve had been a laughingstock, the Capitol had largely left them alone. There was never enough food, but there were holes in the fences, and Peacekeepers who looked the other way. The Hob was allowed to operate unimpeded. No cameras in the off-season, no interviews, no documentaries or reality shows about the Victors, like the shit Mags and Finnick had to put up with in Four. Nobody _cared_ about Twelve, and the price they paid for it were dead tributes. Two children a year, in exchange for this terrible half-peace. Haymitch wasn't so desperate for forgiveness to claim that he did it on purpose, but there was a part of him that was terrified of what would happen should he ever bring home a victor. 

He could run, maybe. Maybe he'd live. But for what? Did he care enough about his own life, to fight to preserve it that much? The short answer was no. And it was the coward's answer - the weak man's way out. Willing or not, Haymitch had walked forty children to their deaths, and in the cold light of morning, when he was out of booze and unable to look away from his reflection in the mirror, he couldn't escape the knowledge that he hadn't even tried to save most of them. He couldn't run away from that - he'd never be able to escape. Whether he lived or died, in Panem or elsewhere, Haymitch would go to his grave with the weight of those children's lives on his shoulders. 

So what was the end? Where could it go? Seneca and Cinna had hope for a better future, and Effie had to have it too, considering how much she was risking by helping them. Haymitch knew she and Finnick were close - she'd started spending winters in Four, and on particularly bad days he would turn on the TV so he could catch glimpses of her in the background of Finnick's stupid reality shows, _An Oh Dear! Winter Solstice,_ or _Fun with Finnick in the Fall,_ what the fuck ever. Whatever it was they were planning - whatever it was they were feeding the Capitol's ear through Effie - Haymitch went back and forth constantly on whether he wanted any part of it or not. They were both braver and more reckless than him, certainly. But there was District, and then there was _District._ People in Four had plenty of food and clean water. They had oceans to fish in when the supplies were low, and a warm climate that didn't kill people when their roofs wore too thin. Their industry was in the wide open air, not deep underground in a poisonous mine. It was different. 

He'd been thinking more and more of his mother, in those days. She would've wanted him to get involved. They'd never discussed politics, at least not significantly, that Haymitch remembered. But somehow, he knew in his heart that she would've wanted him to help. 

Plum's death seemed to actually _please_ the people of Twelve in a way Haymitch had never seen before; the girl certainly didn't have many friends, in the Seam _or_ in the town. He didn't want to know the particulars of her life, he didn't want to know anything, but he picked up details here and there unwillingly, or through Sae - the father had come into some money, went strutting about the Hob with it. Some of the younger children from school chattered about her like she was a ghost story, not even a full month after her death - _poor dead Plum, pregnant and glum!_ \- and even the decent folks from the Seam, who normally showed more compassion, would roll their eyes when her name was mentioned. It was that year that Haymitch realized that he hated them all too, just a little bit. In the same, pitying way that he hated the people from the Capitol: hated them for their weakness, and for their fear. He hated them because they couldn't help any of it. 

Effie's letter arrived in the dead of that dark, cold winter, which Haymitch endured mostly by drinking himself into such an ongoing, perpetual stupor that Sae had actually started to threaten to stop bringing him food. It wasn't a particularly effective threat, considering how little Haymitch really cared for his health, but the fact that she was trying it at all was sort of telling. 

_Haymitch,_ she wrote, on a sheet of odd-looking paper with flecks of blue and purple in the pulp, _I hope this letter finds you in good health. I'm writing not to nag you this year - I can hear your laugh of disbelief all the way here in Four! - but to tell you of a recent development in my personal life that I feel that you should be aware of, as my colleague. Otho has proposed to me._

Haymitch dropped the page on his desk and walked straight out of his house. He stood on his back porch for a long time, staring up at the flurries of snow that twirled down from the sky and into his yard, and it was only when his feet started to go numb that he remembered he wasn't wearing shoes or socks or - well, pants, either. So he kicked the side of his porch railing, cursed out loud at himself when his toe started bleeding, and then reluctantly limped back inside. 

The letter stayed there for three days, ominously waiting for his attention, and Haymitch managed to avoid thinking about it for - oh, twenty minutes here and there, if he was being generous. He flipped through the channels when he was sober, looking for something from Four to see if she'd gone to Finnick's, but there was nothing but Escort competitions that year. Both Nine and Seven were looking for new ones, and the festivities were even more over the top than usual - they'd come up with some kind of Hunger Games-lite version for the unfortunate women involved, where they had to survive in a wilderness arena and compete against each other for food. 

He had to force himself to read the rest of it, his stomach churning with nausea, not because he wanted to know - he didn't, he wanted to curl up in his house to die and never think of her again - but because he knew she would be sending him a real message with her smudged words, and he _had_ to know that. The rest of the letter said nothing - long-winded sentences about how it wouldn't affect her work and how she hoped he was looking forward to this year as much as he was, whatever. Haymitch read it more thoroughly than he usually did, hoping that there'd be some hint or clue about how she was really feeling about it, what was _really_ happening to her - but she was too careful, and there was nothing. 

The smudged words were more significant: _be aware Otho unwell careful please stay home._ Haymitch went over the letter two or three times, squinting at the words to see if he'd missed any, but Effie was precise, and deliberate. Stay home? Please stay home? What the fuck did that mean?

"Otho unwell" was obvious enough, but it's not as if Haymitch didn't know that already - he'd met the man twice the year before, and he was visibly unstable, muddled by drug abuse and unpredictable in conversation. He'd say odd things at odd times, and it was obvious that his connection to Snow had given him access to an abundance of things that had rotted his brain straight through. It had hit Haymitch somewhere deep and tender to see Effie cringing beneath his arm at the parties, her smile plastered on her face, flinching every time his hand swung too close to her cheek. Haymitch avoided them whenever he could; he couldn't help her, couldn't even _comfort_ her, and he couldn't bear to watch it. He'd seen Indigo debase herself with dates before, he'd watched Finnick wine and dine with the Capitol elite plenty of times without batting an eye, but seeing it happen to Effie was unspeakably worse, somehow. 

The reasoning for her message came in the form of an invitation a few weeks later, to a banquet hosted by the Communication Minister - Otho's father - celebrating their engagement. Haymitch shredded it into pieces and flushed it down the toilet, and when some harried party planner called to confirm his RSVP, he pretended he'd never received it. 

"We made sure it was priority delivery! Are you sure they didn't deliver it to a different mailbox?" the woman said. Her voice was vaguely familiar - Haymitch thought it was one of the blustery blue-skinned ladies that planned a lot of the Games events at the sponsor's lounge. 

"I'm the only one in the Victor's Village, toots," Haymitch said dryly. "Are you sure you got the address right?"

She was flustered enough that it was easy to confuse her, and Haymitch ran her in circles for a while until she started to sound angry, at which point he faked another call and hung up. Then he dodged the follow up calls, and the follow up calls to the follow up calls, and so on and so forth, until he got so fed up with the ringing one night that he tore the fucking phone off the wall. 

It was televised, naturally. Haymitch was torn between watching it and beating himself to death with a heavy rock, and after some real deliberation he did end up going with the former. Escorts were as popular as the Victors were, in some Districts, and Effie was more well-known than most. Haymitch wasn't sure if it was something she did to protect herself - to make herself so popular they couldn't make her disappear without people noticing - or if it was just another way they took control of her body, as well as her voice and her words and her hair and everything else they could possibly get their fucking hands on. 

So of course they put it on TV, she was on TV all the time; she had a regular spot on a cooking show hosted by a comedian whose whole schtick was that he had a talking parrot, which was hilarious considering Haymitch knew for a fact that she couldn't cook to save her life _and_ that talking birds creeped her out. She was a beloved character on Finnick's shows, and on the Games-adjacent recaps and talk shows that clogged up the television in the months leading up to the Reapings. Her face was known all across Panem - a friendly, vacant smile that sometimes hurt Haymitch's eyes when he looked at it, not just because it looked painful for her, but because he was quite possibly the only person in the world who knew it wasn't real. 

It was painful to watch it, notable mostly because Haymitch didn't often feel pain anymore. Not in a present sense, not in a way that actually felt like pain instead of just the everyday miserable grind of his life. Most of his days were blurry and unfocused, and he'd hardened himself to things like friendship and camaraderie a long time ago. Outside of Chaff, who didn't talk to him sober anymore, Haymitch could go entire years without speaking to anyone in any real way at all. How stupid then, how fatally, unimaginably dumb, to get so attached to someone he couldn't even properly talk to? Maybe it was _because_ of that, that he cared so much. It wasn't as if he was totally unaware of his own intimacy issues, not when he'd built them up around his heart on _purpose_.

Either way, he did _know_ her, in a certain sense. He knew she hated Otho Pharsalus more than she hated almost anyone, and he could tell that by the way she held her chin, and the way she never actually touched him, just hovered her palm delicately a few inches above his skin. He knew she was getting tired of it, the years weighing down on her body in a visible way, still unnoticeable to anyone who hadn't seen her taking her makeup off at night in the penthouse, or burying her face in a pillow so the mics wouldn't catch her crying. She always spat on the ground after a Reaping, after the cameras shut off and the children were pulled away; Haymitch had seen her do it ten times now. Ten years of children, ten years of the Games. She hadn't lost her mind yet - that alone was a victory. Haymitch often thought about that conversation with Indigo, all those years ago - how she said it would be easier if she did. Kinder, if she lost herself quickly. 

He didn't know her the way he'd known his family, no. Not even the way he knew Chaff and Indigo, Finnick and Mags and Beetee, and all the others that had wormed their way into his life one way or another. But he did know her. He _knew_ her. She wouldn't lose it, not completely. She was tough enough to hang on until the bitter end - just like he was. He knew that in his bones. 

So Haymitch sat in his living room with his liquor in his lap and watched the engagement banquet she hadn't wanted him to attend, and was almost completely unsurprised when her disastrous, odious fiance dropped dead right in the middle of the main course, live on camera, frothing at the mouth. Effie leapt to her feet and gave a convincing scream of terror that was the last captured sound from the feed before it was cut off, hastily covered up by a rerun of a weather report from that morning, and Haymitch couldn't help it: he laughed out loud, tilting his head back against his couch and letting it burst from his chest, a sound that those walls hadn't heard in years. He laughed and laughed and laughed, and when the news bulletin cut in again, with coverage of what was being portrayed as a tragic heart attack, he laughed some more.

It was murder, of course. Frighteningly easy, Cinna told him, weeks later when Haymitch finally journeyed to the Capitol for some pre-Games publicity that he normally found an excuse not to do. That year, though, Haymitch didn't want to be anywhere else. 

"He was a drunk and a dust addict, but he was in line to take over for his father, and of course we couldn't let him have Effie," Cinna explained. His studio was similarly outfitted to Seneca's apartment with magnets, but they were still playing it safe, waiting until after dusk to talk, sheltered by the hum of the power generator on the south-facing balcony. Haymitch felt out of place and strange, surrounded by a stylist's workspace, like he was fumbling through an expensive shop and knocking everything over. Cinna didn't blink twice at his dirty clothes and unwashed hair, though - he never did. "Did she tell you anything - no, of course she didn't. They monitor your mail."

"That's how you talk to her?" Haymitch asked. He'd been wondering that for a long time. "I figured the notes from the Avoxes were from you, but they're in code, I couldn't read them."

"Only during the Games," Cinna said. He'd offered Haymitch whiskey, but drank something that smelled like rum himself, with a rind of orange floating among the ice. Even his liquor was fancy, Haymitch thought. "She has a bit more freedom during the off-season. We still have to be careful, but - oh, I can't imagine what it would've been like for her, all these years, if she couldn't talk to _someone._ And we grew up together; we have our own sort of shorthand way of talking. I suppose it's like a code, in a way." He paused, tilting his head as if listening to something Haymitch couldn't hear. "I could...pass something on for you, if you like. I know it's rather impossible for you to speak to her openly."

"Say what?" Haymitch scoffed. "'I'm sorry?' She doesn't need to hear any of that shit from me." There was nothing he could say to make it easier, or better. Nothing she could say either, to keep the nightmares away, to spare Haymitch from the next year's children, or the year after that, or the year after that. It was what it was. What Haymitch really wanted was her _secrets,_ but even those he wasn't entitled to, and he wasn't enough of a bastard to ask. "Did he hurt her?"

"Yes," Cinna said unflinchingly. "But he's dead now, so that makes it a little better. For her, anyway."

"A little," Haymitch said dryly. 

"We framed him even, so our hands stayed out of it entirely," Cinna continued. "As I said - it was easy. A few conversations, here and there - Effie being in the right place at the right time, to pick up some incriminating audio. Pharsalus wasn't a rebel - far from it - but he did have designs on Snow. It was almost...sad, how easy it was."

"Why would they do it on TV?" Haymitch asked, disturbed by that detail. "Kill him like that on live feed? No way people buy the heart attack story. They could've easily arrested him and tried him for treason if he was plotting against Snow. That's what they usually do, but this...it was sloppy."

"Effie's audio isn't monitored by the Presidency," Cinna said. He looked at Haymitch sidelong for a moment, like he was debating how much to say. "We've known most of this for awhile. Do you want me to answer your question completely, or do you want to continue to stay out of it?"

Haymitch laughed. "I've never stayed out of it," he said. "I just didn't want to see my District get fire bombed because I was rubbing elbows with a fucking rebel Gamemaker."

"Fair enough." Cinna's smile was a barely-there quirk of his mouth. "The Escorts were a pet idea of an associate of Snow's named Clemensia Dovecote. She's a housewife, by all official appearances; she was married for twenty years to a businessman, some executive in weapons munitions but he died young - only forty-nine. Poisoned." Cinna rolled his eyes. "Naturally."

"Dovecote," Haymitch said, frowning. "She officiated the opening ceremony for my Games. The big to-do they did for the Quarter Quell." He remembered a woman in her late fifties with long dark hair and strikingly plain clothes. She'd stood out among the colorful, ostentatious Capitols like a black crow in a flock of swans. "I can't remember what they said about her. It's been so long."

"She had some sort of honorary position in Snow's government at the time. He'd only been President for what, five years then? But Snow was Head Gamemaker for decades before that; she was his unofficial assistant, according to Seneca. His father went to school with them both, you know." Cinna shook his head. "Nobody knows if it was her idea, but she was in charge of them for a long time. It was definitely her idea to bug them. She designed the mics that they inject into their necks. She went to university for medicine; she even has it _patented._ " He leaned back in his chair, disgust passing over his face briefly and then melting into neutrality again, like a cloud drifting quickly across the sky. "She monitors the feeds. She has a team of people that listen, but she and Snow had some sort of falling out a few years ago, so we know she's not telling him everything. The assassination attempt during the fifty-ninth Games? We think she was behind it."

Haymitch winced. Snow had executed entire families that year. It'd been blamed on a secretary from the Energy Ministry, who'd been made to watch - on live television - as dozens of children from his extended family were shot in punishment for his crimes. When they finally killed him, they hung his body in the Hall of Justice for weeks, until it rotted apart and fell down in pieces on the lobby floor. "So it was Dovecote that killed Pharsalus," Haymitch said, and Cinna nodded. "Because he was plotting against _Snow?_ Or plotting against her?"

"They're one and the same, for the time being. Snow protects her, for some reason," Cinna said with a shrug. "We don't know how to use her. There's nothing we can do, anyway, not right now. Mitigate the damage, I guess." His teeth clinked against the ice as he drank, long and deeply. "She arranged the marriage for Effie. She's friends with Otho's father. She's the one who chooses the Escorts, you know - they say it's Snow, but it's really Dovecote. She trained Effie herself - still tells her what to wear, occasionally. Like a goddamn den mother." Cinna's emotions showed themselves in flashes - microexpressions that Haymitch knew was the extent of what he would ever be allowed to see. "She _likes_ Effie. Dotes on her sometimes, sends her gifts. Doesn't like her enough to protect her from a man like Otho Pharsalus, of course, but - well, it's better than nothing."

Haymitch wasn't sure what to do with the information, but he did feel marginally better having it. "What did he even want?"

"What any Capitol politician wants," Cinna said, "power. Sex. Drugs. He had some sort of idea to discredit Snow's influence with the tech barons in Three. Snow's got dirt on all of them, and Pharsalus had figured out what he had, probably through his father. Whatever his plan actually _was_ , it clearly wasn't a work of genius." 

"Like you and Crane and Odair are much better off?" Haymitch asked, and Cinna conceded the point with a wry smile. "You should leave your girlfriend out of it. She's young, you know. Obvious."

"We're the same age," Cinna said lightly, seemingly unoffended on Portia's behalf. " _She_ recruited _me_ , you know."

"Romantic," Haymitch said. "It'll make for a nice story when they execute you both."

"Yeah, we thought so," Cinna replied with a smirk, unphased. He ran his hand over the balcony railing, the rings on his hands scraping gently against the stone. "You'll forgive me for saying so, Haymitch, but we really thought you might turn us in at first. It was Effie who convinced Seneca and I to approach you."

Haymitch already knew that, but having it explicitly confirmed did something strange and painful to his heart. "Why, because I seemed like such a loyalist?"

Cinna snorted. "Hardly. No, because you always seem like you don't care about anything. We knew it would be a hard sell, trying to convince you to take a risk for something we weren't sure you wanted enough to fight for."

"Yeah, well. Ain't hard to figure out why." Haymitch's bitterness was well-worn and comfortable, but it had never faded, or lost its intensity. It was strange, how it worked - he didn't miss his family anymore, in fact most days it felt like they belonged to a different life entirely, a version of himself that he didn't remember being anymore. When he thought about them, it was the little, fond details that stood out - like the way Bale would lose his breath with laughter when Haymitch would tickle him - most times he barely even had to touch the kid at all, just the simple motion of his hands towards his bare feet would be enough to set off his giggles. Or his mother's habit of undoing and redoing her ponytail over and over when she was nervous, and the way she'd smile at Haymitch when he did something that made her proud. The way Juniper always skipped over the broken step that led up to his house, even though the steps were deep and it required twice the effort than simply avoiding the sharp edge would. No - his sadness had faded, the longing was almost gone. But the anger and the betrayal were still there; even thinking about it still made him so furious he could still barely speak about it, barely even acknowledging that it happened. "I'm somewhat of an open book."

"Now that's just an ugly lie," Cinna said with a laugh. "We weren't sure you even liked Effie that much, until you tried to warn Finnick away from her, you know."

Haymitch coughed a little on his drink, surprised. "You're kidding."

"You two fight all the time."

"Yeah, for the _cameras,_ " Haymitch said. Just that morning they'd had a furious argument in the lobby of the Training Center about something to do with a car service, Haymitch didn't remember the details. Effie had called him a _classless brute,_ though, he remembered that. It was somewhat of a game for him to try and get the funniest insults out of her that he could; he was sure she did the same, what with the way she had to bite back laughter the last time he called her a _plastic-haired peacock._ "It's dangerous, for her and me, if they think we're friends. You're not a stupid man, Cinna, you already knew that. Ask me what you really want to ask me."

Cinna looked rueful, caught in the gambit. "I don't need to _ask_ anything. I just need to know…" he rubbed his goatee, the makeup around his eyes making his face look elongated and catlike. "You don't have to help us with anything. I just wanted some assurance that I could trust her with you, I suppose. She's my oldest friend, you know. I've known her since I was a child. And she's bearing a heavier weight than all of us, in some ways."

"I changed my mind. You _are_ stupid if you think I could do anything to protect her," Haymitch snapped, but the anger behind the words were absent, so it came out sounding more forlorn instead. He thought again about Cinna's plain-spoken answer, when Haymitch had asked if Otho hurt her. It didn't matter that Haymitch hadn't asked for details, and that Cinna wouldn't have given him any regardless - he'd still be thinking about it for a long time. Wondering how and when, what he did to her and how she endured it. Sitting up at night in his stupid, empty house, coming up with nightmares on his own so they wouldn't take him by surprise later on when he finally fell asleep. "You know what? You should pass something on for me. Tell her to stay away from me. Tell her to find a husband she can tolerate and get that fucking thing out of her neck somehow - that's the only happy way this ends."

"I'm fairly certain she already knows that," Cinna said, not without sympathy. "You know there was something her father used to say to us, when we were little - that if you had to pay for your safety with ignorance, then it wasn't really safe, was it?" Cinna paused significantly. "He used to say a lot of things like that."

"Hell of a thing to say to a couple of kids."

"Hell of a world to raise them in." Cinna clinked his glass gently against Haymitch's, his eyes far too understanding for Haymitch's comfort. "I'll tell her you said something nice. I'll make you sound good, don't worry."

Haymitch snorted. "Don't do me any favors."

"Who said it was a favor for _you_?" Cinna said. 

There was literally nowhere he and Effie could go for privacy, literally nothing they could do to talk to each other without somebody's eyes or ears prying in. The penthouse was wired front to back with cameras, and even the roof wasn't an absolute guarantee against bugs, not since they remodeled it two years back and changed out the forcefield generators. His mail was searched, and so was hers. Every scrap of paper that went through their hands during the Games season was read by somebody. Her apartment was surely monitored, as was every ballroom and banquet hall they stepped foot in for the Games events. If they went to a bar or a restaurant in the city, reporters would trail them like ants, snapping photos and flashing lights in their face, trying to catch them in the middle of a funny expression so they could sell the picture to the dime rags they sold at the corner newsagents, the magazines full of embarrassing photographs of celebrities. She had some freedom of movement in the off-season, all Escorts could travel between Districts with a good enough excuse, but with the combative relationship they'd acted out for the public, there was no way for her to visit Twelve without raising eyebrows and setting off alarms. Cars and hovercrafts were bugged - even Haymitch's house in Twelve was on camera, even if he made an effort to find them and "accidentally" break them each year. They always found ways to install more. 

And even if they were able to find some place to escape to - if there were some pie-in-the-sky place they could talk, some way he could sneak her out to the woods or into a dark corner somewhere and finally _speak_ to her, ask her all the questions he'd been saving up for the last decade - there was still the microphone in her neck. There was no escape, no respite. Haymitch could see the way it was starting to get to her - the manic tinge to her laughter at the Reapings, the way she'd drift off in the middle of a sentence, disassociating sometimes only halfway through a conversation. 

Ten _years._ Eleven now technically, plus whatever it was Otho had been doing to her - it made Haymitch's palms itch with anger and frustration, that he couldn't even talk to her about it. He regretted turning down Cinna's offer the second he'd left that night, but - he still couldn't come up with anything he could've told him. Everything Haymitch wanted to say was too painful, too honest for Cinna's ears - and besides, none of it would help her, in the practical sense. What use did she have for his sympathy, or his anger? Haymitch didn't even want it himself. It just made everything that much harder. 

Possibly it was the selfish option, not to say anything. _Probably_ selfish - yes. Haymitch placated his guilt by looking into Clemensia Dovecote, who was both an extremely visible public figure and intensely mysterious, a very rich and influential socialite who clearly had taken care to keep herself hidden behind the scenes as much as possible. She had a long-standing relationship with Snow - the exact nature of which had been subject to _years_ of speculation, going all the way back to when Snow was Head Gamemaker. She'd been married at the time, but Snow had had a wife too - not that fidelity mattered all that much in the upper echelons of Panem politics. That both their spouses died from poison within weeks of each other as much as confirmed that there was _something_ going on, not that Haymitch wanted or needed the exact details.

She'd fallen out of favor not long after Haymitch's Games; whatever happened between them was bitter enough for Dovecote to be shunned publicly, but not bitter enough for Snow to have her killed, apparently. There were rumors of health issues, and some bad investments of her late husband's fortune. She lived in a grand house on the outskirts of the city, where the Escorts apparently gathered on a regular basis for "family dinners," as they were sickeningly called, and according to Seneca - via Cinna - she was still popular enough with enough of Snow's ministers that she had a not-insignificant amount of influence. 

A dangerous sort of person for Effie to be liked by, Haymitch thought - still, he could see the value in it. His little talk with Finnick hadn't done shit, of course. She was a spy - to put it bluntly. Whatever it was she was doing, passing information back and forth, putting bugs in Clemensia Dovecote's ear, his concern and fear certainly wasn't going to stop her. 

Their opportunities to talk - even in the fake, empty way they usually did - that year were even fewer than usual - the quick succession of Otho Pharsalus' death and Johanna Mason's victory in the Games made the Capitol a fraught, tense place to be that year. Nobody had expected her to win - not even the Gamemakers. She'd even fooled her mentors, was the rumor. 

"Firecracker of a girl," Chaff commented, having stopped by Twelve's penthouse to watch the after Games interviews. Effie had been whisked away by Peacekeepers after the broadcast ended, so swiftly Haymitch felt like he'd barely even seen her - she'd been accompanied by them constantly since Otho's death - but he'd lingered in the city anyway, not wanting to return to Twelve for reasons he didn't care much to dissect. "She'll make a good Victor."

They were in the living room, unable to talk freely. Haymitch had offered him a cigarette so they could go to the roof, but Chaff had turned him down, as he had been doing for years at that point. Haymitch had been teasing him about how old he was since the day they'd met, but he was starting to actually look like it - deep lines in his face, a stooped back, losing his train of thought in the middle of sentences. Haymitch served him some of Effie's most expensive bourbon and tried not to think about it. "Clever way to win. Make everyone underestimate you."

"Won't work a second time," Chaff said, his hand shaking as he drank from one of the penthouse's octagonal liquor glasses. His tributes that year had been young, and both of them had died painfully, and Haymitch could see that it had gotten to him. The deaths of Twelve's children that year had at least been quick. 

"No. But now people are frightened of her," Haymitch said, which was possibly too bold of a thing to say on camera. Chaff shot him a warning look. "Chaff, my friend. You look like shit. Don't tell me you're still fighting off that flu."

Chaff shot him another look, more irritated than warning this time. "I'm fine."

"Yeah, you look fine," Haymitch said sarcastically, kicking his friend's shin with the toe of his boot. Chaff jumped, and then glared. "You remember that doctor you took me to, what was it - twelve years ago? The one who fixed my teeth?"

Chaff barked with laughter, louder than any other sound he'd uttered since he'd arrived. "Dr. Sawbones?"

"That's right," Haymitch said, laughing too. "What was her actual name? I don't remember."

"Sanditon," Chaff said. "Dr. Alba Sanditon. She's still around, I think. Why - you implyin' something?"

"I didn't think I implied anything, I just fuckin' said it," Haymitch said. "You look like shit. Fix your motherfucking back, dumbass." He cuffed Chaff's shoulder. "What'd you do to it?"

"Threw it out, few months back. Helping with the harvest back home." Something in Chaff's face had gone dark, closed off. "It's fine."

"Whatever you say," Haymitch said. He wasn't going to hold it against him for not wanting the Capitol's help with anything. Haymitch himself had never turned down the medicine, the surgeries and pills that fixed things so quickly and easily it sometimes seemed like magic. Effie carried an injection around with her that had saved him from alcohol poisoning at least twice now. "Never thanked you for taking me there, you know. I'd still be walking around with my gums out if you hadn't found her."

"They would've fixed it for you," Chaff said, rolling his eyes. "I just found you a doctor that was nice to look at, that's all."

That was true, but Haymitch shook his head, wanting desperately to make Chaff understand. If he didn't want to talk about anything anymore - that was fine. But it didn't stop Haymitch from wanting to say it. "No," he said, "you found me a solution. Somebody that I liked." He hit Chaff's shoulder again, harder, so he would turn to look. "You made it easier to bear."

Chaff's face did several very complicated things, and he struggled visibly for a second, holding the glass of bourbon so tightly his wrist muscle flexed. He leaned into Haymitch's hand on his shoulder, very briefly, before shrugging it off, his jaw tensing and his head turning away. Haymitch let him retreat, reaching for his own glass and waiting him out, leaving the moment up to him. 

"Didn't do nothing," Chaff finally said, gruff and on the verge of some great emotion that neither of them could afford to let loose. He didn't look at Haymitch as he spoke, his shoulders moving restlessly, twitching as if in pain. "You sure _you_ don't have nothing to tell me? You're not dying of something, are you?"

"No," Haymitch said, but even as he spoke the word he knew it wasn't true. They were all dying, very slowly, bleeding to death under the bite of a poison that infected everyone, rich and poor, Capitol and District, young and old - all the same. The only variance was how quickly it killed you, and whether you knew what it was before you died, or if you were lucky enough to still believe its sweetness. "Just nostalgic, I guess. Only a few more years until the next Quell. Makes a man evaluate some things."

"Evaluate," Chaff repeated, wary. He still didn't look at Haymitch. 

"Yeah." Haymitch turned to the television, which was playing a news bulletin about Otho's father, Communication Minister Pharsalus, who was stepping down from his position in order to process his grief for his son's death. This had been the secondary goal of murdering Otho, Haymitch now knew. "You ever do that, Chaff? Evaluate things?"

"No," Chaff said tersely. 

"Too bad." Haymitch had meant it, when he'd told Seneca and Cinna that Chaff would sell them out. He would sell Haymitch out too, when it came down to it. He was a hard, old man - bitter and cynical, worn down by a million different injuries. And furthermore, he had friends in his District - close friends, people he loved far more than he loved Haymitch. But he also knew that Chaff was decent at heart - sharp and quick despite his age and health, decent at heart and reliable, when it came down to it. He couldn't be counted on for the sort of things Effie was doing, or the groundwork Cinna and Seneca were laying for some unknown future opportunity - but if it happened, if they needed him - Haymitch knew he would arise to the occasion. Or maybe he just _hoped_ he would - maybe Haymitch hadn't lost all his optimism after all. 

"Too many ghosts for that," Chaff said, still angry. He looked at Haymitch like he'd been betrayed; Haymitch knew if they'd been on the roof Chaff would be beating him up again, like he had all those years ago when he'd first asked about Effie. "Better to keep your eyes on the future. Only way forward is _forward._ You know what I mean?"

Haymitch did. "Sure," he said blandly. 

Chaff narrowed his eyes, as if he could sense the decision that Haymitch had already made. The one he'd made years ago really, the moment that Effie had offered it to him. 

"Haymitch," was all he said quietly - _accusingly_. Haymitch met his eyes without flinching, and Chaff was the one to look away first. 

"I just want you to take care of yourself, that's all," Haymitch said quietly. "You're a good friend to me, Chaff. You always have been. Don't think I never noticed."

Chaff turned away again, seemingly unable to speak for a moment. He leaned his face into his hand, sighing so deeply it almost sounded like a wheeze. Haymitch drank his bourbon and watched his shoulders shaking silently, his own hand trembling in its grip on the edge of the glass. 

"You're a fucking idiot," Chaff finally said, so roughly it sounded as if he'd been crying. Quiet enough that the mics might not have picked it up. 

"Yeah, what else is new," Haymitch said. It had settled into his chest - the choice. He'd made it, and now he was different - like the way he'd been remade at his Reaping, the eerie calm and determination that had fallen down around his shoulders the moment Mrs. Delta Greenheart had called his name. There were moments in life that were more like doors than decisions - you stepped through them and that was it, you were changed. A life before, and a life after. Haymitch had enough regrets to fill a million oceans, but this particular door wasn't one of them. 

Chaff scoffed at him, still too overcome to speak, and they sat there for a long time, watching the television through blank eyes. Haymitch fell asleep before Chaff left, right there on the couch - and in the morning, there was no trace of him left in the penthouse - not even his dirty liquor glass. As if he'd walked right out the door with it still in his hand, disappearing into the glittering streets without a sound, without a wave, without a goodbye. 

Best for both of them, really. Haymitch didn't regret that, either. 

There was, if the term were loosely defined, a plan. Haymitch did not have much input in this plan, especially not after the ascendance of Plutarch Heavensbee, who was without contest the most pompous, unbearable person any of them had ever met. It was almost comical, the way Cinna would practically backflip out of the way to avoid shaking the man's hand. And Effie - forget about it. Her cool, subtle disdain was a work of fucking art. 

All the Capitol families were rich, with long histories of influence going all the way back to the Civil War; Seneca Crane's father had gone to school with Snow, and there were buildings all over the city named Heavensbee this and Heavensbee that. That a man like Plutarch - low in the ranks of the Gamemakers compared to Seneca, but rising through them with an ease that was somewhat frightening - had seen fit to throw his lot in with them was an encouraging sign, from one point of view. Otho Pharsalus' father was killed in a hovercraft accident two weeks after his resignation, and more deaths followed: Snow's Defense Minister, several rich businessmen, and finally Head Gamemaker Ravenskill, who overdosed at a nightclub midcoitus with Indigo. 

Haymitch caught only a glimpse of her on the news broadcast, laughing hysterically as she was pushed into a car by Peacekeepers, before she was whisked away to the hospital for "recovery." They were trying to spin it as if the two were in love, as if Indigo had been a willing party, but nobody was buying it - by then the rumors were looser than people's lips. He never saw her again, after that. Years later, they would discover what had happened to her, but by then the details wouldn't matter. He knew well enough what they would do. 

Effie's letter that winter was long, under the guise of a lecture about proper hygiene and conduct at the Reaping - Haymitch read it three times, laughing the whole time at the paragraph about his hair - and her message was longer than she'd ever sent before. Haymitch pieced it together and wrote it down on a piece of scrap oilskin, smoothing it out on the coffee table in the dead of night. If he died soon - and he probably would - these were the words he wanted to be thinking about, when it happened. This was the thought he wanted to preserve in glass and stone, calcifying it into his memory so that nobody could take it away, no matter what they did to him. 

_Haymitch, trust yourself, careful. Thinking about you always. Love care patience Effie._

Love care patience Effie. Haymitch rolled them over in his mind, over and over and over, until he woke up mouthing them to himself, whispering them out loud to the cold air of his bedroom. _Love care patience Effie._ A sunrise in a sentence. Haymitch burned the oilskin, and her letter too for extra caution, but he didn't forget what she said. He never would. 

It would come back to haunt him later, the way everything started moving so quickly, fast enough that Haymitch stopped noticing the passage of time and just braced for impact every day, waking up with his shoulders already squared and ready for the blow. If it hadn't been Katniss and Peeta, it would've been someone else - Plutarch was impatient, he wanted to blow the Arena as a statement, he had a confidence that seemed foolish until they finally learned what he knew about District Thirteen, which was of course the leverage that changed everything. If Haymitch could go back and do it over again, he might have fought harder to shield the kids from the worst of it - he never stopped feeling like he could've fought harder. But it was what it was, and what it was felt like providence - a gift from fate, a perfect alignment of Girl and Boy and Story, and once it had begun there was no stopping it. As Cinna had said - _an opportunity will arise._ Panem was a country built on manipulation and subjugation - strings pulled taut across every citizen's wrists. It didn't take much to send the whole structure toppling over beneath the weight of its own cruelty. Just one snip, in exactly the right place - and it was as good as over. Their goal then became to mitigate the damage caused by the collapse.

On the night of the Victory of the 74th year, as Katniss and Peeta lay in their hospital beds, Effie and Haymitch shared a drink in a private lounge of the Games clinic that was reserved solely for Victors and Escorts. Haymitch was there for Katniss, and Effie for Peeta - they'd each chosen one, and the decision had been as natural as it always was. This had been the case for many years - Haymitch focused his attention on the one with the better chance, and Effie swept underneath him to comfort the weaker. It often felt like a fool's errand for the sake of their own guilt rather than a real attempt to try, but this year, everything was of course very different. This time, it felt like something clicking gently into place. 

They were drinking red wine, and Effie had taken her shoes off which meant she had something to tell him. They were surely on camera, but the air felt fragile and private, dangerously so - everything had felt like that, since the moment they'd blown the cannon and sent the hovercraft in for Katniss and Peeta both. Wherever Seneca Crane was, at that moment, Haymitch hoped he was having one last, long drink. One last decadent meal in his fortress apartment. One last night with his wife, who would surely be dead soon too. 

"So lucky," Effie said absently, all the vigor and excitement from earlier gone. She'd nearly exploded at the penthouse, her voice going so high-pitched that it made Haymitch wince, bouncing around with such exuberant, showy happiness that Haymitch was surprised nobody else picked up on the fact that it was fake. But Effie had done her job a little too well, he thought sometimes - nobody suspected her of having a brain anymore. Even Plutarch sometimes failed to pick up on the nuances of her speech. "So blessed. They'll make a lovely couple on the Victory Tour. Panem will love them."

Haymitch didn't have to work very hard to find the fear in her voice. "The girl woke up earlier," he said. "Kept asking about Peeta. They had to give her something to calm her down, she was so frantic."

What Katniss had actually done was scramble off her bed and bolt for the door, trailing IVs and electrodes behind her. Two Peacekeepers tackled her in the hallway, and Haymitch had to drag one of them off of her before they injured her even more. Katniss was unresponsive as he carried her back to her bed - mumbling her sister's name over and over, her pupils blown wide in her face, before growing frantic again at the sight of the doctors. Haymitch was forced to grit his teeth and hold her wrists down as they sedated her for the third time that day, pinning her thin hands to the bed so she wouldn't hurt herself. Plutarch had assured them all that the private rooms weren't bugged, and the doctors were given bribes to scramble the camera footage with their equipment before it was retrieved by the Peacekeepers - Haymitch could only hope that was true. 

"How romantic," Effie said faintly. There was a fading bruise on her cheek, glistening with ointment. Haymitch couldn't imagine that Peeta had given it to her - a Peacekeeper, more likely - but whatever was going on in Peeta's room, he didn't dare ask. "Peeta was quite distressed as well. We had to show him some news footage from the broadcast before he'd believe that Katniss was alright. I still don't think he'll truly believe us until he sees her in person."

That had the ring of truth to it. Of the two teenagers, Peeta was by far the more deserving of his survival, in Haymitch's opinion - which is exactly why he'd bet on Katniss instead. Victors didn't win by being good people. 

"Romantic," Haymitch parroted dimly. They'd kept the lights low, Effie claiming she had a headache, but Haymitch had a feeling it had more to do with keeping their image fuzzy and vague on the cameras. "How are you, sweetheart? Tired, I bet."

"Yes, Games season is always a bit exhausting," Effie said. "Exciting, though."

Her usual cheerful playacting was a bit underwhelming, at the moment. Haymitch outstretched his hand beneath the table and laid it on her thigh, hoping the cameras couldn't see. Her face didn't react, but he felt her body shivering, and she leaned in closer, pressing her leg into his grip. "You should go home with Finnick this winter," he said. "Get some sun. Lay on the beach for a few weeks."

"Oh, Finnick's quite sick of hosting me by now," Effie said, "besides, he has enough on his plate at the moment." 

That meant something was wrong with Annie. Haymitch frowned. "He's not still in the city, is he?"

"Of course he is. They need him here for the preparations for the Quarter Quell next year," Effie said. Haymitch's grip on her leg tightened, and her hand fell down beneath the table to grip his wrist. "Both he and Annie were called to the Gamemaker Hall this morning."

"Interviews?" Haymitch asked tightly. Effie nodded. "I haven't gotten a call yet."

"You should expect one," Effie said, trying to make an effort to sound neutral. Her hand was desperately tight around his wrist. "They'll want to put you front and center, as they did with the last Quell Victor. I don't know if you remember, but Mrs. Dovecote accompanied you on your Victory Tour, along with the Victor from the 25th Quell. Do you remember her? It was her daughter, Athena."

Haymitch had vague memories of the 25th Victor, a woman in her late thirties with long black hair but the Tour had embarked only days after his family's deaths so he wasn't in his right mind, to say the least. "Her _daughter?_ "

"Poor Mrs. Dovecote," Effie said, clucking her tongue. She slid her palm down to grip his hand properly, in a way that felt significant. "It's not common knowledge. She's a very private woman, you see - I believe President Snow did her a favor by letting poor Athena fade out of the public view. She went mad, you see. Never really recovered." Effie shook her head. "Her Games aren't part of the archives, but Mrs. Dovecote has told me about them. Such a sad story."

Haymitch was tense, watching her face for some indication as to why she was saying this openly, but Effie just gripped his hand harder. If Dovecote monitored the feeds, then whatever Effie was saying was knowledge that _Dovecote_ would want people to know. If Dovecote _controlled_ the audio, decided what Snow did and didn't hear, then Effie was trying to tell Haymitch something about who knew what, about what Dovecote wanted and what Snow didn't know about yet. "I never spoke to her much. Only crossed paths with her once or twice on the tour. She didn't spend much time in the city."

"No, she wouldn't have." Effie shook her head. "They voted that year," she explained. "The Districts chose their own tributes for the first Quarter Quell. This was before the Escort program." Her voice quavered a little, and Haymitch squeezed her hand, glancing over at the door where their Peacekeeper had his back turned towards them, watching the hallway. "Mrs. Dovecote and her husband lived in District Two. This was before they closed the borders so tightly and their family was in munitions and defense - they were quite successful. But as they lived in the Districts, their daughter was subject to the vote - during a normal year her name would've been excluded from the drawing, you see, being Capitol born." Haymitch felt a dawning understanding - a Capitol family, living amongst a District. Rich businessman and his socialite wife, the widely rumored mistress of the Head Gamemaker. Their daughter, of Reaping age. And an opportunity - power handed to the people, for once in their lifetimes. Choose who gets to die. Of course they chose the girl. "Fair is fair, of course, and since an overwhelming majority of the District submitted Athena's name, there was nothing Mrs. Dovecote and her husband could do. She was fifteen at the time, and quite underestimated in the Games. Nobody thought she would win. Mrs. Dovecote says she was quite magnificent - and I did meet her once. Athena. Even in the state she was in before she passed, she was quite intimidating. Impressive."

Haymitch struggled to remember. They'd given a speech together at some point - he couldn't remember where. Maybe District Seven. She was taller than him, lanky and perfumed, wearing long gowns that trailed on the ground behind her. She didn't speak to him much that he remembered. "How did she die?"

"Disease, I believe. Some kind of sickness - I didn't want to pry. Such a tragedy." Effie's eyes glittered in the low light, her wig almost in disarray, pulled to and fro by her anxious hands for hours. "Nobody could quite… _believe it,_ when she won."

Snow rigged it, Haymitch concluded. Saved his lover's child, made her a Victor and then swept her aside, kept her locked away in an asylum so everyone would forget. It was easy to imagine, then, how it went from there. As Snow's power and influence increased, as he ascended to the Presidency and grabbed it tightly in an iron grip, that secret, the leverage Dovecote had on him would become a bigger and bigger liability. Especially if things had gone sour between them. Too squeamish to kill her? No, Haymitch thought - too _careful._ Better to give her a nonsense job - like babysitting the Escorts - and keep an eye on her. Use up her money and influence until everyone forgot who she was, and _then_ have her killed. "Now that's a sad story, kitten."

Effie didn't react to her least favorite nickname as she normally did - not that Haymitch was expecting her to. "That is why Mrs. Dovecote is so devoted to her work with us, you know," Effie said. "It's such an honor to work with her. She's so dedicated to the cause - it's very honorable." Effie paused, allowing Haymitch a second to translate that. "Even more dedicated than the President himself, some have said. She's confided in me the last few days, Haymitch - it's been a very special experience for me. I've always looked up to her, you know."

Haymitch clutched her hand and digested that. She must have just learned it, to risk telling Haymitch instead of smuggling a message to Cinna or Plutarch instead. She'd been absent for a few hours that morning - Games official business, the Peacekeeper had said - she'd probably gone to see Dovecote. Had a conversation. 

Clemensia Dovecote hated President Snow, was the message that Effie wanted to convey. Enough to work against him, certainly enough to plot his death, if the theory about the assassination attempt during the 59th Games was true. But she hated the Districts _more_ \- they'd tried to murder her daughter. Naturally she hated them. But she knew a whole hell of a lot, about any number of things that could be useful, and she was willing to talk to _Effie._

Haymitch swallowed thickly. The plan was to get her out with the rest of them, when the time was right - when they made their escape. Play dumb for as long as they could, make people fall in love with Katniss and Peeta's romance, then when the iron was hot - fake their deaths, incite as much chaos as possible, and flee. Plan A was the Victory Tour, when the kids were all in the same place and they were close to the border of Six, the safest exit point to Plutarch's contacts in Thirteen. An explosion or something - Plutarch wanted casualties, to incite rebellion, and Cinna and Haymitch were trying to talk him down. Plan B was to sneak out of the Capitol after the Quell Reaping via the sewer tunnels, which was more dangerous but bought them more time, since no one would notice they were missing for a few days. Whatever they did, Cinna and Haymitch had insisted on getting Effie out with them, but this - this changed things. "Sweetheart," he said, and then his throat closed up. His distress was mirrored on Effie's face. 

"She's such a sweet lady," Effie said softly. Her hand was shaking beneath Haymitch's. "Kind. Her friendship is invaluable to me." She was crying, Haymitch noticed, her cheeks glistening in the glare from the light in the hallway. That was the real reason she wanted the lights dimmed, he realized. So she could hold his hand and cry a little, before they had to leave each other. "She's invited me to winter at her estate in the city, and I've accepted. It's such a grand house, Haymitch - oh, I wish you could see it! She's preserved artifacts from every year of the Games. Such _history._ "

Haymitch wanted to shake her, for a scary, violent second. "Sounds fun," he said, through clenched teeth. 

"Very fun." Effie wiped her face against her shoulder, in a move that looked more like a shrug. "I'll miss Finnick and Annie this solstice, of course. If you'll...if you'll tell them for me? That I regret not being able to join them this year?"

"Send them a letter," Haymitch said hoarsely. His hand was going numb, but he didn't dare let go of her. He'd hold on for as long as he fucking could. 

"Oh I will, of course, but you'll see him before I will, won't you? You'll explain?"

"Yes," Haymitch agreed. He had to look away from her face; it was too much, watching her silently cry. 

They sat there for a long time, as long as they dared, their wine glasses for once untouched. Outside, the world rolled on despite their anguish - Peeta and Katniss slowly healing, unaware completely of what awaited them. Or some idea, maybe - Peeta understood much more than he let people see, he was not unlike Effie in that aspect - but no true idea. Nobody dared tell them anything. It had seemed kinder to keep them in the dark - safer. But of course nothing was ever safe. 

"I'll see you at the Reaping, obviously," Effie said. She wiped her face with her free hand, smudging her makeup. Haymitch had the wild impulse to reach up and pull her wig off her head, to see her real hair for once - but it was still too forward somehow, even with all that had passed between them, unspoken but deeply felt all the same. "Do try not to drink too much this winter, Haymitch. The children will need you."

Already, Haymitch felt overwhelmed by the responsibility. Overwhelmed at the very idea of bringing not one Victor home, but _two_ , to a District that had no idea the disaster that that kind of attention could bring. "I'll try, honey. Because you asked me nicely."

"Oh, is that all it would've taken? Just asking nicely?" Effie huffed, pulling his hand further into her lap and pressing it against the warm concave of her stomach. Haymitch shuddered. "I would've done that years ago, if I'd known."

"That's the catch, see. I knew you could never stand to be nice to me for too long," Haymitch said. Feeling bold, he slid his hand out of her grip and pressed it flat against her abdomen, rubbing his thumb against the sliver of bare skin where her blouse met her skirt. Effie's eyelids fluttered. Sitting angled across from her at the table, leaning over with his back to the door, it looked as if he were simply slouching in his chair. "Don't feel bad. I don't like being nice to you, either."

"Yes, I'd picked up on that," Effie said dryly. "You catch more bees with honey, you know. But I could hardly convince a man with vinegar in his _veins_ to come around to that way of thinking. I'm not a miracle worker."

Haymitch laughed roughly, despite himself. "Vinegar in my veins. I like that."

"Vinegar and white liquor," Effie said, almost fond. A little too obvious about it, just this once, in a moment of weakness. It took Haymitch's breath away, with both exhilaration and fear. "And ice water, too."

"Now call me a brute again," Haymitch taunted, "you know how I like that."

"I refuse to indulge your perversions, Mr. Abernathy," Effie said primly. His hand was beneath her blouse now, and she was trembling so hard he could see it in her shoulders, jerking in surprise every time he moved his hand even slightly. Haymitch had fucked so, so many people in his life - willingly and unwillingly - but he'd never seen anything as erotic as the look on her face in that moment, her eyes closed tightly and her lips pursed and yet still speaking in her normal, even voice - as if he weren't even touching her at all. "You really - oh," she jumped when his knuckles brushed the edge of her bra, raising her hand to her hair to block the angle of his arm from the doorway, "you really have no idea how to speak to a lady."

Any number of vulgar, clever things he could say popped into his head, and Haymitch said none of them. It felt like enough of a gift just to be able to touch her skin for a minute, to watch her mouth go slack, to smile at her and know that they were as safe and private as they could possibly be. Maybe that they would ever be. 

"No, I guess not," Haymitch said, sliding his palm back down to her stomach. He flattened the back of it against her ribcage and let it rise and fall with her breath, leaning back in his chair and grabbing his wine with his free hand. Effie let out a sigh - of pleasure or relief or both - and placed her arm carefully over the back of her chair, shielding him again from the Peacekeeper's eyes. "Anything you want me to pass onto the kids? Katniss probably won't wake up again until after you're gone."

Effie visibly thought about it for a long moment. "Tell them I - " she stopped abruptly, and fumbled for her wine glass, her eyes bright and tearful again. 

"Yeah, okay sweetheart," Haymitch said. He understood the sentiment very well. "I'll come up with something."

She sniffled a little. "Make it sound good," Effie commanded. 

"I'll do my best," Haymitch promised, and meant it. 

There was often no time for regret, or hesitance. District Thirteen was a world of grey concrete and combative egos - same game all over again, different colors but the same shit regardless, Haymitch thought, and hunkered down in Command to ride out another wave of Plutarch vs. Coin vs. whoever the fuck else. Before this, when they were just a handful of idiots with dreams of grandeur, Haymitch never would have guessed in a million years that he would be in a situation like this one. A _military leader_ , who sent _squads_ of people to do things. They'd even tried to give him a title - _Commander Abernathy._ Haymitch had laughed in the face of the poor kid who offered him the name badge, and then mocked Coin so mercilessly for it that nobody ever brought it up again. 

In the first few months he was there all he could think about was Cinna - the last time they'd seen him, in the elevator at the penthouse as they left for the launch before the Quell. The three of them - Cinna, Effie, and Haymitch - had stood in silence together for the long ride down to the basement car shuttle level, all three of them standing stiffly and desperately wanting to touch each other, to brush arms or tug on Effie's hair or shake each other's hands, fucking _something_ \- but of course they couldn't. The most Cinna did - the last thing Haymitch ever heard him say - was to turn to Effie and ask her what the blend of tea was that had been served at breakfast that morning. 

"Oh, some green blend I think," Effie had said, her voice trembling so violently that Haymitch and Cinna both winced, reaching out at the same time and pulling their hands back when they remembered themselves. "I didn't recognize it."

"Reminded me of the tea we used to drink in the summers when we were young," Cinna had said. He turned back to the door, his face a genteel mask. Haymitch turned to look at Effie, who had her eyes tightly closed, as if she couldn't bear to look. They'd known even then, what was about to happen to him. Cinna had known, too. "Do you remember? Your father would serve it iced, and he always put mint in it."

"I remember," Effie whispered, and then the doors opened. Cinna disembarked first, at the ground level where the prep team was waiting. They were to ride over to the launch site together; Effie and Haymitch wouldn't see him again. "Cinna," she said, as he stepped over the threshold, and he turned, but of course none of them could say anything. There was a Peacekeeper standing at the entrance to the garage, and cameras in the elevator. Cinna had told Haymitch in passing that neither he or Effie had had a chance to talk, to even pass a message, since they'd arrived in the city after the Reaping. 

As the doors started to close, Cinna laid his hand over his heart, his eyes on both of them, and that was it. Effie made a sound like she was dying as the elevator started to descend once more, and Haymitch couldn't help himself - he stepped closer and gripped her elbow, holding her up as she got herself together, shielding her face from the camera as much as he could. Shielding his own, too. 

He thought about that a lot, in the grey of Thirteen. The warmth of Cinna against one shoulder, and Effie at the other. At some point, in the last five years, both of them had become constants to Haymitch - Cinna and his sleek outfits, his wry humor, his expensive liquor. Effie and her smooth skin, her double talk conversations, and the sly, under the table way she loved him. And they were both gone - Cinna to death, and Effie, of course, to Clemensia Dovecote. 

One of the first things Beetee did, before he hacked the Capitol TV frequencies, was to hack Effie's audio feed. The other Escorts had been executed just days after the Arena exploded, but their plan for Effie had worked - she'd fled to Dovecote the second Katniss raised her arrow, and for the time being, Dovecote was protecting her. Her mansion on the edge of the city doubled as a fortress - clearly the woman had been prepared for a second round of war, probably all her life - and the Presidency was too obsessed with Peeta and Katniss to go after her. Who cared about an Escort, after all? They'd been so careful, for so many years. If anyone suspected what Haymitch felt for her - they still clearly didn't think she was important enough to use her as leverage.

And she was making herself useful to Coin, with that audio feed. Dovecote was paranoid and elderly, dying of some sort of disease - apparently something that discolored her skin and gave her hallucinations. Poison, most likely, although the way she and Effie talked about it, it seemed as if it were something she'd been suffering with all her life. Effie was doubling as her nurse - Dovecote had banished all the Avoxes, there was nobody left in the mansion but herself and Effie. And as she got sicker, she talked more. Effie was ruthless at getting her secrets - digging in deep at every turn. Repeating the most relevant pieces of information herself, so she could be positive the feed was picking it up. 

This was also part of the plan. Coin had reluctantly agreed to accept Effie's presence in Thirteen because of her assistance in the Capitol - all her spying and information passing - but Haymitch could tell she was skeptical, that she thought Effie was just a pretty thing that they kept around for sex and window dressing. Coin was indulging them, Haymitch gathered, but it all changed when they started getting the audio feeds - when Effie started giving them _intel._ Real, _actionable_ intel - the locations of Peacekeeper weapon deposits, hidden bank accounts of the Snow family fortune, weaknesses in the defense systems for the pods in the Capitol streets, names of conspirators in the Districts who had sold out their people in exchange for safety. Dovecote was dying - she clearly thought Effie was her dead daughter Athena half the time - and answered any question Effie asked, at length and with as much coherence as she could muster. Listening to the audio, Haymitch wondered at times if Dovecote weren't just a little bit more aware than they thought - if they were listening to her last strike of revenge against Snow, whose crimes against her were many and varied. Dovecote had told Effie all about those, too. 

It was high level, need to know information - the audio feed from Effie. Not even Beetee knew who it was on the other end - all they'd told him was that it was a mansion of a prominent citizen, and once he'd hacked it they locked him out of the permissions. Haymitch was allowed in only because he was the only one who could sometimes translate Effie's cryptic sentences - he'd been doing it for over a decade, after all. Once again, Effie was getting him in the room. Clearing him a path while the rest of the world looked straight past her, not even noticing her at all. 

With sobriety brought clarity, however, and the clarity of the situation was grim. Coin wouldn't spare any soldiers for a rescue, not when their goal was Katniss, and Katniss' goal was Peeta. And removing her from the situation when she was still useful - Dovecote was losing coherence by the day, but she was still answering Effie's questions - was absolutely out of the question. Haymitch went into the tiny, closet-like office where they had the access point for Effie's audio every day, to read the transcripts the computer spat out and translate anything that was vague, too clever for Coin or Plutarch to decipher - and hearing her voice almost made it worse. It was difficult not to overthink, to analyze every dip and tremble in her tone, to wonder and spin out nightmare scenarios and possibilities. When Dovecote died - Coin would no longer have any use for Effie. And at that point in the game - Haymitch still didn't have a plan for how to get to her. 

"You really trust these people?" Katniss asked him one morning, when Haymitch went to drag her away from her family's compartment. Coin was indulgent of Katniss' moods to the point that people were starting to notice and resent it; Plutarch had pulled Haymitch aside one morning and implored him to talk to the girl. "Gale says these compartments aren't bugged, that they're not listening to us. Do you really believe that?"

Haymitch snorted. "Subtle as ever, kiddo," he said. "If I didn't, you just gave the game away."

Katniss rolled her eyes. Her sister's cat - the one she claimed she hated so much - was curled up on her lap, purring. Katniss had started to pet it absently as they spoke; Haymitch wasn't sure she even knew she was doing it. "What could they do about it? They already know I don't trust them."

Still such a little girl, in so many ways. Haymitch knew he'd have made a terrible father, just by his own reactions to Katniss' obliviousness, which the rest of the world seemed to find endearing. Haymitch just got annoyed. And pissed off, most of the time. "They could do a lot," he said shortly. "No, they're not bugging us. But they're watching us. All the time." He shot her a pointed look. "You could at least _try_ to be pleasant. You know, act like a human being?"

As Katniss had slowly come to terms with the situation, her dry, dark humor had returned. It reminded Haymitch painfully of Chaff. "Thought they wanted a Mockingjay, not a human," she said with a snort. 

"They want both," Haymitch said truthfully. A doll, in all seriousness. Haymitch had been reminded uncomfortably of the Escorts, the way they talked about Katniss in the meetings at Command. Do her hair like this, put some blood on her face but no bruises. If she cries, maybe people will like her more? Make her sing and _then_ cry, Haymitch. Say something that will make her sad. "Just imitate Peeta if you have trouble."

A scowl flickered across her face and then disappeared. She still hadn't forgiven him entirely for not being able to get to Peeta - and Haymitch had allowed her that anger, as it was her right. She _was_ just a little girl, after all. "He should've been the one. Why did it have to be me? He'd be so much better at all this." Her hand shook slightly against the cat's nape, who was putting up with Katniss' punishing grip with heroic patience. When she finally clenched too hard, the cat yowled in pain and leapt away; Katniss seemed to take this as a personal offense, and glared at it like it'd attacked her. "He's charming, he's funny. He knows how to talk to people, how to be...how to be nice."

Haymitch sighed, easing his body down into one of the chairs that sat at the modest table in the Everdeens' compartment. They'd thrown him in detox and then immediately afterwards to the mercies of the training gym - Haymitch hadn't had to actually _use_ his body like this in years. Not even Peeta had been so harsh, when he'd been trying to get them all in shape for the Quell. "That's why I said 'imitate.' You know they won't know if you don't mean it. You just say the words and that's mostly what people want."

"That's crap," Katniss said. "The propos - the speeches - it's terrible. None of it is usable. And it's not like I'm not saying the words right - it's the stuff underneath that's missing. That's why they're getting sick of me." She scowled again, and Haymitch could see the fear underneath it, as clear as day. Maybe that's why she annoyed him so much - because he understood her so well. Recognized things in her that always hit too uncomfortably close to home. 

"That's one thing. I'm talking about another," Haymitch said. He shook his head. "Katniss. Why does Peeta like you?"

"Fuck off," Katniss said with an angry frown, taking it as an insult. Haymitch held up his hand, cutting her off before she could continue. 

"No, think about it, I'm asking you a question. _Why_ does Peeta like you? What are the things you do that make him care about you?"

"I - " Katniss stopped short, almost struck silent by the question. Haymitch felt something sort of close to pride, watching her struggle to figure it out, taking it seriously for once. "I don't know. He shouldn't."

"Don't go there. That's not what this is about. He likes you - the whole world knows he likes you. He fucking _loves_ you, for some reason," Haymitch said. "Why? Why do people like other people, why do they begin to care?"

"I - I really don't know," Katniss said. 

"What made you care for him, then?" Haymitch asked. "Don't say you don't know. Think about it, sweetheart."

She sat there for a long minute, lost in her own thoughts. She was losing the baby fat around her face, and her body was growing stronger, more adult with the benefit of a regular diet and actual medical care. Haymitch looked at her and could see how she would look at thirty - regal and powerful, her grey eyes darkening to a deeper shade like her mother's, grown into herself and walking through the world with confidence. It was a nice dream - a good goal to work towards, maybe. If Haymitch couldn't make it through this, if Effie couldn't either - maybe the kids could still survive. That had always been the main priority, anyway. "I guess I...liked him because he was nice to me. He gave me some food once. I saw his mother hit him, and I - I felt sorry for him, and guilty that he got punished because of me."

"Good," Haymitch said, trying to convey the general demeanor of _love care patience Effie_ that had carried him through many terrible nights. "And what the fuck does that mean?" He wasn't very good at it. 

Katniss rolled her eyes. "I care about him because he's a good person?"

"Because he took a hit for you," Haymitch said, ticking them off on his fingers, "because he did something selfless, and didn't come after you for something in return. Because he showed himself to be a caring, decent person. Right?" Katniss nodded, her eyes tearing up. Haymitch gracefully pretended not to notice. "Isn't that the same thing you did for your sister when you volunteered?"

Katniss looked thunderstruck. "I had to do that," she blurted. 

Haymitch laughed at her. "You really didn't, sweetheart."

He watched her struggle with that for a few moments, before her jaw hardened again. "If all it took to get people to like me was to be noble, they would like me already though."

"But nobody would know anything about you if they weren't around to see it," Haymitch said. "The Reaping was televised. Millions of strangers watched you jump at the chance to die so your sister could live. And Peeta - if you hadn't seen his mother hit him, if you'd just found the food somewhere and not known where it came from - "

"They did see all of it though," Katniss interrupted impatiently, and then snapped her mouth shut when Haymitch glared at her. 

"As I was _saying,_ " Haymitch continued, still eyeing her in annoyance, "you can have every good excuse in the world to hide out here in your room all day, and the people who know why you're doing it will leave you alone, but the rest of them - all they see is a girl who glares at everyone and doesn't talk to anybody but her cousin at lunch. And I guarantee you that most people here know by now that he's _not_ your fucking cousin, Katniss." Haymitch raised his hand again to stave off her protest. "I'm trying to get you to think about how it _looks,_ that's all. You pledge your undying love to Peeta Mellark, who was willing to die for you over and over, who _volunteered to die_ \- just like you did! - just for the chance to keep you safe, and now he's in the hands of the Capitol and you're snapping at everybody and running around with your ex-boyfriend."

"He's _not_ \- " Katniss said hotly, her cheeks hot with a blush, but Haymitch kicked the side of the chair she was sitting on sharply, and she shut up. 

"I'm ain't telling you what it is, I'm telling you what it looks like," Haymitch said. "For fuck's sake, kiddo. Go to lunch. Sit with people you don't know. Learn how to talk. Let them _see you._ You're almost a real grown up now, you're gonna have to figure it out eventually."

"Because you're such a smooth conversationalist?" Katniss said snidely, but he could tell her heart wasn't in it. Her shoulders slumped in defeat, in the next second. "They think Peeta's a traitor. Those propos they're making him do - "

" _Coin_ thinks he's a traitor. But Coin is not the only person who lives here," Haymitch said definitively. He shook his head. "You know what Effie would say? 'You catch more flies with honey.'"

Katniss snorted, but her face twisted in some unnamed emotion at the mention of Effie's name. Haymitch didn't even want to know, honestly. "I'll try. I promise."

"Good." He kicked her chair again. Affectionately this time - he hoped. "Come on, now. Let me kick your ass in the gym for a while. It'll help me look tougher in front of the soldiers."

"Yeah fucking right," Katniss grumbled, but went with him anyway. Even went a little easy on him like he'd asked, even if she still put him on the mat three times in a row. It was the little shit that mattered, with Katniss Everdeen, Haymitch had come to notice. 

It unnerved Haymitch to see how deeply Finnick had fallen apart without Annie - it was embarrassing in a way, and kind of sweet in another. He felt weary and old sitting at the kid's bedside, watching him tie his knots over and over - to have seen beneath the veneer of a young man who had always been implacably strong was unnerving and still wholly unsurprising. 

"Where's Effie?" Finnick asked, on one of his more coherent days. As Coin inched closer and closer to a rescue attempt, he was growing more aware of his surroundings, especially after time spent with Katniss. Effie's audio had carried some vague information about where the prisoners were kept the day before - Haymitch would remember how her voice sounded for a long time, the plain desperation in it as she'd hounded Dovecote for details about where Peeta and Annie were being held. "Is she here? I could've sworn I saw her yesterday, at the cafeteria."

"She didn't make it out, Finn," Haymitch said patiently. He'd explained this to him at least a dozen times by now. "She's alive, though. We know that for sure."

Finnick's face fell, and then brightened again. "We'll get her out when we get Annie," he said. 

"Maybe," Haymitch said. It was a struggle even to get that out, when he knew the truthful answer was 'no, we won't.' "Tell me again about that wreath you and Annie made last winter."

"It was Effie's idea," Finnick said. "Great stuff for the cameras. Mags helped her sketch it out. Did you know Effie could draw?" Haymitch shook his head in the negative, even though he did. He'd been finding her doodles all over the penthouse for years. Little drawings of flowers and birds in the margins of her letters. "Annie was the one who actually made it. It took her weeks. I found most of the shells and seaweed for it, but Effie helped me. She told us that her father - " Finnick stopped talking abruptly, his eyes darting from side to side.

"No bugs here, kid," Haymitch said gently, and Finnick glared at him, rubbing the back of his neck nervously. "No one's listening. You can keep talking if you want."

"Effie wouldn't want - she kept telling us to be careful. With her notes. You know about her notes?" Haymitch nodded, his throat tight. "Of course you know. You probably got more of them than anybody. She talked about you all the time."

He had to turn away, pretending to hear a sound out in the corridor, just to hide the pain and anger that came over his face. More than anybody - right. "Complained about me all the time, more like."

"No, she didn't," Finnick said, oddly serious. His sense of humor had vanished with Annie Cresta, as had his bravado. "She told us we could trust you. If anything happened to her, she told me and Annie to find you and do whatever you said."

Haymitch knocked the chair against the wall as he stood up, so blindly infuriated by that sentence that he lost himself for a second. Finnick just watched him warily, his face expressive and uncomfortably sympathetic, and Haymitch didn't know _what_ the fuck to say, so he just walked away. That was, among several others, one of the days that it was very fucking difficult to be sober. 

What was almost unbearable about his life there, in addition to all the other unbearably painful things, was that Plutarch thought they were friends, and would stop by Haymitch's compartment with hot chocolate - of all the things to offer a sober drunk, that was probably the most insulting - to "chew the fat," as he called it. Haymitch's scorn had no effect on him whatsoever; he was infuriatingly friendly at all times, no matter the circumstances. Haymitch often thought about murdering him. It was a somewhat comforting fantasy. 

"She said your name on the feed last night," Plutarch informed him, in a lighthearted sort of way, as if they were chatting about the weather. Haymitch went very still in his chair. "Aunt Clemensia was asking about you, in her dotty little way. We think she's beginning to have some lucidity again - that last burst of awareness before death." Plutarch chuckled. "Tough old bird. Nobody thought she'd hang in this long."

"You know," Haymitch said, at length, "you don't have to call her 'Aunt Clemensia' anymore."

"Oh, but she was very dear friends with my father. It would feel disrespectful," Plutarch said. This was absurd for many reasons, but mostly because he was currently listening, with an eerie cheerfulness, to the sounds of her dying a painful, drawn out death. "They were talking about sex. More chocolate?"

"Fuck off," Haymitch said. 

Plutarch shrugged genially. "I had no idea she'd had so many affairs. And with old Strabo Plinth! That would've been quite the scandal when I was a boy. The man was thirty years her senior."

"Yeah," Haymitch said, rolling his eyes. "Scandalous."

"Effie was very patient, of course. But she's always patient. She didn't spill any secrets about you, don't worry." Plutarch winked. "But she talked about her late fiance a bit. Sounded like quite the stallion!"

"Shut up," Haymitch barked. "You don't know shit about what that was, Heavensbee. Neither of us do."

"As you say." Plutarch raised an eyebrow. "Aunt Clemensia thought you were having an affair with her, you know. That was apparently one of the reasons behind the engagement."

"We weren't," Haymitch said, reigning in his irritation. He glared at his mug. "I never touched her."

"Effie said something similar. Quite loudly, in fact. Alma seemed to get the message." Plutarch just kept on smiling genially, utterly unbothered by everything. Haymitch thought this was probably why people either liked him very much, or hated him fiercely, with no gradiance in-between. "But an affair is much more than sex, Haymitch. I believe that was what Clemmie was worried about. She said on the feed that she was trying to protect Effie, in her way. She even apologized for having to kill him. Can you imagine?"

Haymitch scowled. "How much of that did Coin hear?"

"Enough. But I destroyed that portion of the transcript, nobody else will see it. And Aunt Clemmie will be dead soon," Plutarch said, oddly gentle. "It's not a crime to care about her, you know. Here in Thirteen, anyway."

Haymitch shook his head. "You really think so?" he asked. "And you wonder why Seneca always called you naive?"

"I prefer 'optimistic.'"

"Uh huh," Haymitch replied, rolling his eyes. "That's just what they call it when you have money."

Plutarch laughed. "You are far more charming than people give you credit for, you know," he said. "Sometimes I think, if the circumstances had been better back in the 50th - _you_ could've been our Mockingjay."

Haymitch scoffed loudly at that. 

"It's true. People work to impress you. You don't even notice, most of the time." Plutarch shook his head, in mock sadness. "Charisma is always wasted on the oblivious."

Haymitch ignored him, pushing his mug away and rubbing at the schedule tattoo on his arm. It always alternated between meals, the gym, and Command, but the latter had slowly taken over most of his days until it was just a short message, right below his wrist: _High Priority Personnel are to be available for Command Meetings with the exception of mealtimes and personal care. Level A Food Allotment._ He tried to force himself to think, sometimes, about what sort of life he could have here, should the war go badly and none of them could return. Sometimes he even thought about Effie being here - what she'd think of the place, how she'd find a way to fit in. He had no doubt that she would - she was a chameleon in a lot of ways, charming in the way Plutarch was, either loved or hated with no neutral middle ground. But Effie used her personality in a way that Plutarch didn't have to - when she annoyed someone, she took advantage of it, pressed herself into their space until she got what she wanted from them. Chattered so much that people stopped paying attention, so she could fade into the background - loudly hiding in plain sight. Underestimated. Overlooked. And when she was loved, it was even easier for her. 

Yes, she could live in Thirteen. She'd put on the jumpsuit and find a way to make herself useful in the most annoying, ostentatious way, and nobody would think twice about looking right past her, which was how she preferred it. And Haymitch would get to see her real hair every day. It was hard to think about. Harder though not to though, not without the help of liquor. "What did she say about me specifically?" he asked. 

Plutarch answered immediately, as if he were waiting for the question. "Aunt Clemensia accused Effie of being in love with you, which Effie of course denied. Then they talked for a while about poor Otho - I assume you don't want the details on that? - and was so vulgar about it that Clemmie got competitive and started talking about her own exploits." Plutarch shrugged. "Clever way to deflect. Effie is a master, truly."

Haymitch exhaled a deep breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding, and didn't reply. 

"You know," Plutarch said, contemplating a chip in the rim of his glass, "if Coin doesn't care about how much Effie's sacrificed for the cause, then perhaps she'd care about a backup plan. If the boy dies, for instance, and the girl can't recover - another love story would perhaps - "

Haymitch threw his mug of chocolate against the wall, so hard it shattered. Plutarch turned his head lazily to look, watching placidly as the liquid dripped down the concrete in dark, dripping lines. 

"Well," he said with a shrug, "it was just an idea."

When the soldiers returned with the Victors, a sniper on the team that Haymitch knew pulled him aside as they waited for news on Peeta and Johanna from the infirmary. Annie was already with Finnick, miraculously unharmed. Haymitch still couldn't believe it. 

"One of my guys found this on the street during the extraction. I didn't tell the higher ups," said the sniper, whose name Haymitch didn't really remember. He was a Peacekeeper who helped them steal the hovercraft though, they all trusted him. "Figured I'd leave that up to you."

It was a piece of etched, edgeless glass, something the Capitol used to use mostly for advertisements. They were like flyers but much more advanced - hooked up to a wireless network, whoever controlled it could change the image anytime. Like a communicuff but one way - and much flashier, since the image was usually outlined in a hologram of neon lights. Now, the Capitol was using them mainly as wanted posters. Effie's picture was on it. 

"How many of these were there?" Haymitch asked, his hands tensing around the glass.

"Dozens. They have them scattered around the city, anywhere they could stick them," said the sniper. "Most folks who live there are just on a curfew. They're still going out to the shops, walking around in the streets." He shook his head in disbelief. 

Haymitch couldn't stop staring at the image. It was of Effie at the Quell launch. She'd worn the same golden wig she'd worn at her Escort competition, way back when, tied into a braid that echoed Katniss' trademark. And those little jewel teardrops were on her face, too. Haymitch had blanched when he'd seen her outfit - it was too bold, too obvious. Throwing herself in with the Mockingjay in such a public way, practically shouting her grief and her allegiance to all of Panem - and when they couldn't get her out of the city with them? He was sure it'd be her death sentence. But Cinna had explained it to him. 

_She wants to be herself, for once,_ he'd told Haymitch, murmuring it to him as they walked up the stairs, in the underground labyrinth of the Training Center. _As much as she can be. Does it even matter now? Let her have it, Haymitch. You know it doesn't._

"They're looking for her," he told Plutarch, back in Command, during a rare moment when Coin was occupied. "They don't fucking know where she is? How can they not _know?_ "

"Aunt Clemensia is very careful," Plutarch said thoughtfully, running his thumb over the glass. Haymitch fought the urge to snatch it out of his hand. Neither of them told Coin, in a silent agreement. Things were progressing too quickly anyway - nobody would dare to derail the agenda for anything. 

Clemensia died the next day, in a manner that sounded incredibly painful; Haymitch was actually monitoring the feed live when it happened. He'd taken to sneaking in when he wasn't needed elsewhere - pathetic, maybe, a way to torture himself - definitely. But it was comforting, to listen to her breathing, to hear her muttering soothing, comforting things to Dovecote as she died. At least she was still there. They hadn't found her yet. 

"Easy, easy, Clemmie," she was saying, murmuring it over and over as the woman coughed, moaning in pain. It sounded as if she were having convulsions as well, and Haymitch had heard Effie cry out twice at something alarming - blood, maybe. "Easy, my dear. Just try to breathe."

"Athena," Clemensia said, through a moan. "Athena…"

"I'm here," Effie said gently, and Haymitch closed his eyes. It hurt sometimes, to hear her being kind. 

It went on for hours like that; Haymitch even stepped out to check on the kids, and when he returned it was the same. Plutarch was occupied - not that Haymitch actually thought he cared about his "aunt" all that much anyway - and no one else but Coin knew what this room was for. Haymitch had long since turned off the transcription machine. 

When she finally died, Effie burst into tears - and Haymitch was suddenly very glad that he was the only one listening. Whether she cared genuinely for Clemensia or not, it wouldn't look good to Coin - he sort of hated that that was his first thought. 

"Oh God," Effie muttered, struggling to control the sobs. "Oh God, what do I do. What do I do?"

"Wrap up the body, sweetheart," Haymitch said uselessly, clenching his fists around the desk that held the computer. "Wrap up the body. Stay calm. Lock the doors."

"Oh God," Effie said again, and started to hyperventilate. It was a very specific, horrible sort of pain, to listen to her panic and not be able to help her. Haymitch grimly shoved a chair underneath the doorknob. He'd make something up for Plutarch or Coin later, if they tried to get in. 

It had never occurred to Haymitch, this entire time, that Effie wouldn't have been a hundred percent sure if anyone was listening. The plan all along had been to hack the feed so she could feed them information from the inside, but the last time Effie had heard from them they still weren't sure if Beetee would be able to do it. Haymitch sat there with his head in his hands for the next hour as she tried to white knuckle her way through a panic attack, alternatively crying in heart-wrenching, painful sobs, and breathing heavily, talking to herself as she attempted to calm down. It was probably the first time in sixteen years that Effie had truly allowed herself to freak out like that - to speak to herself without caution, even in private. Now that the person who was always listening to her was dead - it was the first time she could. The intimacy of it was almost horrifying - there was no way that Effie would ever forgive him, had he allowed Plutarch or Coin to hear it. 

"Oh, shit fuck," Effie said finally, after a long period of relative calm. Haymitch jerked his head up and almost laughed; it was the first time he'd ever heard her curse. "Shit. Haymitch."

He went tense again, his hands clenching. 

"Haymitch, if you can hear me." Her voice broke. "I hope you can hear me. Haymitch - there's hardly any food left here. I don't know how long I can stay."

"No, no, no," Haymitch said. "You stay the fuck put. You stay right fucking there, Effie. Don't you dare, don't you _dare_ \- "

"I can - I can make it last for a little bit. Shit." There was a sort of crashing noise, and Haymitch pictured her in a kitchen, or a pantry. The audio didn't often pick up physical movement - Jesus, if Haymitch had known that, a _lot_ of those nights on the roof would've gone differently - but loud noises, and of course any small sound that Effie herself made, came through loud and clear. "I have water, but the food is - it's like she _knew_ how long she'd last! She didn't want to give me hardly any extra for after she died. That miserable, vindictive old - "

Haymitch laughed again, listening to her spew words that he'd never in a million years thought he'd ever hear her say. He felt a little giddy, listening to her speak honestly for the first time. Like he was seeing her clearly, even though he'd known her for almost half her life. He wondered vaguely if she'd learned most of those words from him - probably. God knows she hadn't learned them from Cinna. 

"She has to have a stash," Effie said, as if she were talking to herself again, calming herself down. "The food comes from somewhere. It's canned, it's preserved. There's a cellar, or a - _shit._ " Another crash. "This place is so fucking big, Haymitch. I _hate_ mansions. I never want to see another fucking mansion again in my life."

Haymitch covered his face with both hands, still laughing. It had the tinge of hysteria to it, even to his own ears. 

"I'm gonna look around. I'm alone, I saw her lock the Peacekeepers out myself - she has some sort of - of cloak, a security system, I don't know exactly what it was - I heard her talking about it to an Avox, but the audio probably didn't pick it up - Haymitch." Effie's breath was thin and shaky. "I never thought I would ever say this, but I really hope someone's listening."

Haymitch put his face in his hands again, desperately trying to stay calm himself. He felt as if he might fly apart at any moment, his skin and his bones and his blood all loosely held together with booze and hot air, all these years. Now, in the absence of both, it was like he had to start from scratch all over again. Remake himself in a new way, one more time. 

"Oh Jesus, she has a parrot too," Effie blurted, with a manic tinge to her voice. "Oh God. I am _not_ eating the parrot, I'm telling you that right now. Fuck _that._ "

Haymitch laughed again, like he hadn't laughed in years. A real laugh, not a bitter one. It felt almost good. 

There was a very short window of time in which Haymitch had access to Effie's audio after that. He was needed in a dozen different places, every day, and the computer with the feed was in a high priority area - it's not like he could sleep in there. Although he definitely would have, if he could've gotten away with it. 

Effie kept up a steady stream of commentary that was at turns horribly sad and horribly amusing - she was funny, which Haymitch had known already from the millions of completely silent, self-deprecating ways she'd made him laugh over the years. Once at a party, she picked up a serving spoon from a nearby tray, breathed on it, and stuck it on her nose as they listened to the host talk; Haymitch had to excuse himself, it was so hard not to laugh. She was constantly twisting her wigs around on her head to surprise him and Finnick, which worked every time without fail. And once she and Cinna even played some sort of arm wrestling game, in utter silence, as they sat on the steps of a ballroom, waiting for their car service to arrive. Haymitch had kept score in the gravel with his boot, and the winner got the last cigarette on the drive home. Not a single word from any of them, the entire time. Haymitch thought about that night all the time, in the weeks after Cinna's death. 

If he could, he would've let Finnick listen too, but there was no time. No access to the kids - not even Katniss was available to Haymitch. They blocked his access to the gym where she and Johanna were training, and Coin told him to his face that he was a _chaotic influence,_ whatever the fuck that meant. At the wedding, Haymitch managed to pull Annie aside and let her know that Effie was alive - he knew from Effie's mutterings the last few weeks that they'd been close - which of course caused the girl to burst into tears and leap into his arms like he'd just told her her parents had come back from the dead or something. Haymitch stood stiffly, grimacing until Finnick ran up and pulled her away, giving Haymitch a _what the fuck?_ look so strident and exaggerated that half the room turned to look. 

"You're welcome," Haymitch called after them, and stormed back to the closet with the audio. Effie was running out of food quickly; he was desperately worried she'd try to leave the house. She couldn't spend the entire war holed up in that fucking mansion with Dovecote's dead body, could she? They were bound to find her eventually. He _itched_ to go after her.

When Katniss and Gale led their team into the Capitol, Haymitch went with them for that reason, moving behind them in hovercrafts that were designed for stealth, and he lost all access to the audio. Access to Effie, period - although he hoped he'd have a chance to slip away with some men to try and extract her, Coin's orders be damned. Plutarch stayed behind in Thirteen - the man had his own entourage now, he was a born politician in every sense of the word - and promised to monitor it, but after four days in the field, Haymitch got word that the feed had gone silent. The Capitol had done something to cut off all transmissions entirely - including all their spy devices. Effie included.

 _We have coordinates for CD mansion though,_ Plutarch's message added, as if trying to end it on a hopeful note. _When possible we will send forces. Stay naive, my friend._

Haymitch only barely resisted the urge to smash his communicuff against the floor. 

Of course all of this was in vain; by the time they'd gained enough ground within the city to send soldiers to the mansion, she was gone. The doors had been broken open - obviously by Peacekeepers - and there was no trace of Effie. Even Dovecote's body was gone - although the parrot was still there, squawking its head off at Haymitch as he stomped through the kitchen, bracing himself for what he might find in every room. 

There was no blood, no bodies, no signs of violence other than the door. A rumpled bed and some discarded clothes that Haymitch knew had been hers, but nothing else. Haymitch asked Beetee to try and find her feed again, once they were inside the limits of the city, but without a location it was like asking him to find a single songbird in a giant flock of geese. 

"They probably took it out of her, if they arrested her," Beetee told him gently, in the know by then as to what it was that he'd hacked for them, and why Haymitch wanted him to do it again. "There's a good chance she'll survive though, Haymitch - they're not exactly torturing rebels for information anymore, they're more concentrated on defense - "

"Okay thanks," Haymitch said, cutting him off before he could start to comfort him any more. It was the first time anyone had referred to Effie as a rebel, though. Haymitch almost felt encouraged by that.

There was no trace of her for weeks. Haymitch tried not to think about it constantly, but it was hard in the quiet moments, when there was nothing new from the front. Katniss and her squad had gone rogue by that point, but Haymitch knew she was still alive from the medical implants they'd given all the kids before they left; Beetee was monitoring them from Haymitch's mobile command center and isolating the signals so that Coin's people wouldn't know, but they had to stay close, within the city, to do it.

It was, in a lot of ways, a blurry and surreal experience, fighting an actual war rather than just holding on and trying to stay alive, like he'd done for so many years before. When the violence drove the Capitol citizens out of their homes, Haymitch thought of Twelve for the first time - he hadn't honestly spared much time to think of his home when it was bombed, which perhaps said something very terrible about him as a person, but whatever. He wondered if this was what it looked like in Twelve, in the final moments when they had to have seen the planes coming. The streets of the Capitol were in chaos - the pods killed more non-combatants than they did soldiers, and many of them were Capitol people, not District - and everywhere they went, every new street or corner they braved, there was death and destruction. Blood and bodies everywhere. Haymitch thought of every Arena he'd ever seen - he'd thought he would be prepared, jaded by his experiences, but he wasn't. 

Effie was dead - she had to be. Haymitch tried to harden his heart, but he couldn't - not without the alcohol. Katniss was probably dead, Peeta was probably dead. He'd already lost Chaff and Indigo, and Cinna in the most horrible way - and now, the only people left that he cared about were adrift in a war zone. How terribly fucking ironic that of all of them, _Haymitch_ was the one who spent most of the war in relative safety. 

Last man standing, and all that. Haymitch was going to fucking kill himself when it was all over, if he had to do that shit again. 

Luckily, it didn't come to that. It was three days or so, all in all, after the explosions at the City Center that Effie was found - emaciated and half-dead, her neck torn open and the mic ripped out by unknown hands. Haymitch had fantasized about doing that himself thousands of times; it was needless to say much worse to see her condition after the hands of a Capitol had done it. They hadn't given her medicine, or bandages, or anything. She was dying of infection when Beetee's squad found her; her blood poisoning her from the inside out. They'd ripped out her bug and thrown her in a cell and left her there; she'd had no water for days, no food for longer than that. And her hair was brown. Somehow, that was surprising. 

"Overlooked," Beetee said, looking dead on his feet himself. They'd smuggled her into one of the mobile hospital units, covered her face with bandages and told the doctors she was a friend of the Mockingjay's from District Four. The harried nurses didn't question it, and Effie hadn't awoken yet; Haymitch was bracing for when one of Coin's attendants wandered past and connected the dots because of the way Haymitch couldn't fucking keep his hands off of her. "Possibly they never even realized who she was."

"Lucky," Haymitch said hoarsely, collapsing on a stool at her bedside and resisting the urge to bury his face in her stomach and fall asleep. Finnick was dead; they'd got the news just hours before. Katniss was still under sedation. Prim Everdeen was dead, too. Snow was in chains. The whole world had exploded, in just the span of a few months. "So fucking lucky."

"Smart," Beetee corrected. "Clever. She survived by slipping through the cracks, like she always did." He touched the edge of Effie's blanket gently. He'd known her, he'd told Haymitch, in bits and snatches here and there. Effie was kind, she was warm, she offered comfort to anyone who needed it, microphones be damned. She had a reputation for generosity amongst the Victors that Haymitch hadn't paid any attention to, because he was so paranoid about showing his hand that he barely even said her name around other people, barely even acknowledged her existence. Everyone thought he hated her, Beetee had explained. Everyone knew the stories about how he'd made her cry in the sponsor's lounge at the opening of the 61st Games, how he'd blown up at Cecelia that time when she'd asked him to pass a message onto Effie for her. _Is that why none of you assholes ever liked me?_ Haymitch had asked. _No, we didn't like you because you were a prick,_ Beetee told him, which was fair enough. 

"Smart and lucky and _brunette,_ fuck me," Haymitch said, brushing her hair away from her covered up face. It was damp with blood and sweat and who knows what else - they weren't exactly giving patients sponge baths - but Haymitch could see what color it was, beneath the grime. A soft, hazy brown. The color of the trees they'd cut to build his porch. Nothing like he'd imagined. But also everything he'd imagined. "Honey, you're breakin' my heart here. I had so many dumb blonde jokes saved up."

Beetee made a strangled sound, almost like a laugh. Haymitch ignored him. 

"When you wake up I'm gonna fucking kill you," Haymitch promised, kissing her forehead. Her breath was wheezy with effort; she'd broken two ribs and they didn't have enough oxygen masks for all the patients, so they were rotating them between the ones that were worst off. She wouldn't die from it, the nurse told them, but she would be in pain. Haymitch hoped she wouldn't wake up until the worst of that was over. "No more spying. This was it. From here on out it's fucking needlepoint and parasailing, kitten."

"You call her 'kitten?'" Beetee asked faintly, sounding halfway between scandalized and horrifically, hysterically amused. 

"Fuck off," Haymitch replied, not looking away from her sleeping face. "She likes it."

"I really doubt that very much, Haymitch," Beetee said gravely, and pulled his glasses off his face to clean them. Haymitch decided to be tactful for once and ignore the shit-eating smirk on his face. 

It was only a matter of time before Coin caught on that she was there; she was starting to make arrests, rounding up Capitol people and shoving them in the same prisons they'd just liberated the rebels from. Haymitch and Plutarch had wrangled a promise of immunity out of Coin before everything had gone down, but it was a different world now, and Coin moved through the Presidential Mansion with a strange look on her face, almost like she was always on the verge of laughter. Haymitch felt a deeply terrifying feeling of dread the first time he saw her sitting at Snow's desk, two Avox rebels helping her with her hair and makeup. It might as well have been a scene from a year ago - a Capitol woman, sitting in her receiving room. Haymitch felt sick to his stomach about it, more especially because there was nothing he could do. 

"I'm glad you told me," Plutarch said, "I'm glad you trust me."

"I don't trust you," Haymitch said. 

"Seems like you trust me a little."

"Well, you'd be wrong about that."

"Ah, so stoic even now," Plutarch said with a chuckle, patting Haymitch on the shoulder. He'd helped them get Effie moved to an actual hospital room, next door to Annie, who'd been practically catatonic for days since Johanna had broken the news about Finnick. Now, the two women sat like sentries at the foot of Effie's bed - Annie, fussing and more alert than she'd been in weeks, attending to Effie's blankets, adjusting her sedative and morphling drips like she was a nurse herself. Johanna - not the person Haymitch would've expected to defend Effie, to say the least, but apparently Effie had done all sorts of elbow rubbing when Haymitch wasn't looking - did her part by chasing anyone out of the room who wasn't Haymitch or Beetee. Even Plutarch got the stink eye whenever he stopped by. "Best thing we can do right now is keep her out of sight. I don't like this speech of Coin's. This term they're starting to use - 'Purge.'"

"She tried to arrest Katniss' prep team again," Haymitch said quietly. "I fended them off and got them out of the Mansion. They're somewhere in the city now - I told them to find some friends, keep their heads down."

"Good idea," Plutarch said. Even his cheerfulness was wavering, in the tense atmosphere of the Mansion. Whatever they'd all thought victory would be like - this wasn't fucking it. "I trust you have a plan? If things...devolve?"

Get them out, somehow. Haymitch had no idea how. It wasn't like he could carry Katniss and Effie through the sewer tunnels himself. But it was an old instinct - _get the kids, get Effie, get them out._ That was always the last ditch plan. 

"Yeah."

"Good." Plutarch shook his head. "How's the boy?"

"Still unresponsive," Haymitch said dully. Peeta was a floor down from Effie and the girls, and two doors down from Katniss. All of Haymitch's people in the same place, and half of them were almost dead. "He had an episode when he woke up the first time, so they have him under guard."

"That's not good," Plutarch said, clucking his tongue.

"No."

"I'll try to have them moved up here," he continued. He paused, glancing down the hallway at the soldier that stood guard at the door to the stairwell. Unlike the Peacekeepers of the Capitol - most of whom were either dead or imprisoned at that point - he looked bored. Young. Unprepared to be where he was, doing what he was supposed to be doing. "They should be close to each other. For now. Aster Everdeen as well - she's still down in the city working at the mobile hospitals." Plutarch shook his head. "Poor woman."

Haymitch snorted; he couldn't help it. 

"Try to get some rest yourself." Plutarch ignored his derision, as was his usual, and patted Haymitch on the shoulder. "I feel as if I should gloat, just a little. Didn't I tell you? To stay naive?"

Haymitch sighed. "Go fuck yourself, Plutarch."

"Good to see you alive too, my friend," Plutarch said, and disappeared down the hallway, chuckling. 

Johanna rolled her eyes, when Haymitch slipped inside the hospital room. She was finally off the morphling - Annie's surprisingly sharp lectures had a lot to do with it, Haymitch suspected - and she had meat on her bones for the first time since he'd last seen her in the Capitol. She spent most of her time in Effie's room sitting on the bed by her feet, crunching on potato chips. 

"He's a fucking freak," she said, talking with her mouth full. She gestured with one greasy hand towards the hallway. She wiped her fingers on Effie's blanket, making Annie turn her head and glare. 

Haymitch pushed her off the bed without ceremony; she squawked and landed on her feet, glaring. "You're one to talk," he said, dodging the swipe of her arm. He could tell she didn't mean it; the trick to Johanna had always been to not take her seriously. Once she figured out that you weren't intimidated, she turned into a loud alleycat - plenty of yowls and screeches but no actual claws. "What the fuck are you wearing?"

"They found some clothes in one of the bedrooms," Johanna said. "Annie and I lifted some dresses for Effie." She plucked at the one she was wearing, which she'd cinched tight around her waist with a Peacekeeper belt. The skirt was short enough to be indecent, but she had on a pair of men's long underwear that on her skinny frame looked more like leggings. "Fashionable, huh?"

"You look like a mental patient," Haymitch said, collapsing in his regular chair at Effie's head. She was waking up here and there, in fits and starts, as Annie and the nurses eased her off the morphling. Being barred from Katniss' room by Coin, and not wanting to trigger an episode for Peeta, Haymitch had been spending a lot of time in that chair. "How's it looking, Doc Cresta?"

"She's good, her vitals are stable," Annie said quietly. She never looked anyone in the eye, but having Effie to look after seemed to be helping her keep it together. Johanna hovered around her like she was a bomb about to explode, but Haymitch could see the way they both wavered in their grief, coming close to the edge of it and then backing off again, using each other as buffers. He didn't want to disrupt that delicate balance, that was for sure. "It's good to see the bruises healing. She's starting to look like herself again."

Haymitch didn't reply, reaching up to touch Effie's cheek. Annie had cleaned her up and brushed her hair. Without her makeup or wigs she was almost unrecognizable from the woman she'd been on television; they were counting on that to help keep her hidden from Coin. 

"Jesus, he's gonna get sappy again," Johanna said, rolling her eyes.

"Shut up, Jo," Annie said casually, still in that soft, gentle voice. She was a meek, distant little thing like she'd always been, but Jo seemed to snap her back to humanity in a way nobody else could, other than - well, Finnick. "I like it when he gets sappy. It reminds me of my papa."

"Jesus," Jo said again. She collapsed in the chair next to Haymitch's. "Effie never told us you were fucking _married._ "

"We're not," Haymitch said. He shoved Johanna's hand away, as she reached out to try and sneak Effie's IV line away. It was mostly for show at that point, to tease them, but you could never be too careful with Johanna. "Both of you fuck off. You look dead on your feet. Go sleep in some beds for once."

Jo whistled. "He wants some alone time with his _kitten,_ " she said to Annie, who wrinkled her nose. Haymitch cuffed her in the head, and she squawked again. "Hey!"

"We'll go," Annie said kindly, gliding to her feet and pulling Johanna out of her chair by her belt. Johanna huffed but followed without protest, hitting Haymitch back on the shoulder as she walked past. Her way of saying goodbye. "Have a good night, Haymitch. I'll come back in the morning."

"Full eight hours, kid," Haymitch told her, shaking his head at both of them. He refused to rub his shoulder where Jo had hit him until they were gone; he still had some pride left. "I mean it."

"I promise," Annie said, with a ghostly smile, and then they were gone. Haymitch could hear them talking all the way down the corridor - distracting the guard, probably, so Johanna could lock the door to the wing behind them. Looking out, like the remaining Victors had come together to do. Kinda like they were friends, or something.

Except for Enobaria, of course, who still hated Haymitch's guts. But fuck her anyway. 

Haymitch was waiting for her to wake up again, and wake up for real so he could just fucking talk to her for once, alone in that room with nobody listening. Nobody coming for them, at least not yet. Just him and Effie and a bed: like every sex dream he'd had for the past decade, albeit with a lot more blood and broken bones than he'd been picturing. She hadn't been able to keep her eyes open for more than a few minutes yet, but he was determined. He'd been waiting for sixteen years; he could stand another few days. Besides, she had to wake up and talk to him _eventually._ He was the only one who knew where the actual shower was. 

His patience was awarded around midnight; he'd fallen asleep in the chair, his head hanging painfully over the side. He woke up when she did, jerked awake by the sound of her gasp, and as he rubbed his eyes and stretched the ache out of his neck, she blinked her eyes open and stared at him, her face looking clear and aware for the first time. 

"Haymitch," she said, and then clamped her mouth shut. Her eyes widened, and she looked over at the door, at the ceiling, her face blanching in clear panic; Haymitch was reaching to soothe her before he'd even thought about moving. 

"It's fine, sweetheart, look at me," Haymitch said, and she turned her head, her face frozen in alarm. "Yes, it's the Mansion. But it's over. We're fine, everything's fine."

"Over?" Effie squeaked, and then clapped her hand over her mouth. Haymitch blinked at her fondly, watching as her face went through several phases of shock and incredulity before she slid her hand to the back of her neck, the bandage that was covering the wound at the base of her skull, and her face went pale white. "Oh my God."

"Yeah, it's gone," Haymitch said gently, and tears spilled over from her eyes. She was frozen on the bed, one hand still touching the wound, staring at him again and crying silently. "I would've kept it so you could destroy it yourself, but the Peacekeepers took it out of you when they arrested you. Do you remember?"

Effie shook her head in the negative. She didn't seem to want to speak, or be able to, so Haymitch just touched her hand gently, pulling it away from her neck and laying it gently down against the bed. She shuddered beneath his touch like she always had. 

"No one's listening," he told her, and Effie started to cry for real then, bone deep sobs like the ones he'd heard over the feed, back in Thirteen. "It's okay. Hey, kitten, it's okay." 

She cried like that for a long time, and Haymitch couldn't do anything but hold her, running his hand through her hair over and over until she stopped shuddering and her tears dried up. She kept her cheek pressed to his arm for a while after she stopped, shivering and clutching his hand, and Haymitch leaned his forehead against her hair for a little bit and just let himself feel it, for once. That she was alive and he was alive and the kids were alive too, in some sense of that word, felt like too good to be true - but somehow, it was. 

"Haymitch," she finally said hoarsely. They'd sat there like that for long enough that he could see the early morning light of the sun peeking through the skylight above their heads. "You're sure nobody's listening?"

"I'm sure," Haymitch said, because he was. 

"There's so much I want to say to you," she said, finally lifting her face away to look at him. Her face was swollen from crying and the bruises were still ugly, even if they were healing - they'd roughed her up for sure, but it was the starvation and the infection that had almost killed her. No torture, thank God. No cruelty like the kind Peeta and Johanna had been forced to endure. "All these years...I had so much saved up. And now I can't remember a single thing."

"I heard most of it," Haymitch said honestly, and her eyes went soft and dark, like they did whenever he used to touch her on the roof. "I always have."

Her smile wobbled. "The children?"

Haymitch didn't falter, because he knew she would panic again if he did. "Alive."

Her eyes fluttered closed. "Good," she said, her hand growing slack in his grip as she drifted off again. "That's good."

She fell back asleep between one breath and the next, and Haymitch sat with her until the sun came up, counting his blessings. For once, he had more than a few. It was - to say the least - humbling.


	2. epilogue

Haymitch was not proud of his conduct in the eight months that Effie and Peeta were away, which he was forced to admit when Effie finally got him on the phone about three months in and screeched at him, _"are you proud of your conduct, Haymitch?! Katniss told me she caught you vomiting in the geese pen this morning!"_

Well, no. No, he wasn't proud. He was a weak man, sweetheart, he wasn't sure what she expected - stoic, noble behavior from a guy who once went on television without any pants?

"That was thirteen years ago," Effie said. "You were still in your twenties then. Hadn't lost your good looks yet."

"Ouch," Haymitch croaked, leaning his back against the wall next to the phone so he could look out the window. He'd been keeping an eye on Katniss' house, but the girl hadn't left in almost a week. That she'd been at least talking to people on the phone was somewhat encouraging though.

"Or your brains," Effie said. "Did you take your temperature this morning?"

"No," Haymitch said. He coughed again, muffling it against the sleeve of his shirt. "I'm fine."

"You are not fine. You are sick. Practically dead. I can hear you wasting away right now."

"This is very sexy dirty talk honey, but it's only ten in the morning here, have some common decency," Haymitch said.

"When was your last aspirin dose? Never mind, I'll ask Sae to check on you. Do me a favor and check your lymph nodes," Effie said.

Haymitch sighed. "I don't know what those are," he said.

"Yes, you do. They're right beneath your big, thick skull," Effie said. "Haymitch, I'm serious, you do sound awful. You have to stop drinking at least until the flu passes, it's not good for your immune system."

So much prolonged exposure to Doc Cresta had turned Effie into a fledging nurse herself; Haymitch waffled daily between whether it was cute or deeply annoying. Often he ended up on the opinion that it was both. "I'm not drunk right now! What do you want from me?"

"Just, so many things," Effie said with a sigh. "Peeta says hello. So do Annie and Johanna. Jo in particular misses you very much. She talks about you _all the time,_ she can't wait to come visit."

The squawking in the background of the call had a distinct Jo-flavor to it. "Uh huh," Haymitch said.

"Now is the part where you tell me how much you miss me," Effie said.

"I miss parts of you," Haymitch said.

Effie sighed. "Please do not continue with that thought."

"The parts under your skirt mostly," Haymitch continued, undeterred. "What color is your underwear?"

"It's called 'fuck off blue,'" Effie said, without missing a beat.

"My favorite," Haymitch said with a grin, and she promptly hung up on him.

It was hard, of course it was hard. Haymitch wasn't any kind of fucking father figure, no matter what Effie claimed, and Katniss was a whole hornet's nest of shit that he honestly didn't feel stable enough himself to deal with. He made sure she was alive, he checked on her occasionally and sometimes he and Sae would gang up on her and sit on her legs until she agreed to eat something, which he thought was more than reasonable. Once Haymitch even hosed her down in the yard to snap her out of a stupor - revenge for all the buckets of water she'd dumped on _him,_ thank you very much - until she was screaming in anger, snapping her jaws at him like a wet, pissed off jungle cat. She hadn't thanked him for that to say the least, but it did get her hunting again, so Haymitch counted it as a victory.

Effie called every other night, and Haymitch was stunned to discover that it actually wasn't all that hard to talk to her - he'd been worried about that, at first. She hadn't spoken a single word to anyone after that first night, for weeks - it was like she'd spent all that time running her mouth frantically, trying to keep herself alive, that she'd used all her words up. It was Katniss, actually, that finally started to draw Effie out of it - wandering blankly around the mansion in a morphling daze, Katniss had run across Effie more than once. They'd started to talk, here and there. Haymitch didn't think it was anything profound, but at least they were both awake, and using their brains. Nobody was more surprised than they were that it helped.

She still was rather stoic sometimes. About once every few weeks he would get a call from her in the middle of the night, and Haymitch would prop the phone against his shoulder and just listen to her cry. It didn't make him so furious anymore, but he still felt like a useless piece of shit, cut off from the rest of the world in a house he hated and a District that still resented him a little bit, despite everything - hence, the relapse. Nobody was perfect, he figured. Effie wasn't all _that_ mad about it - she just worried. Like a mother cat, he thought fondly.

She told him about her father. A Gamemaker in training - not by choice, but _his_ father had bought their way out of District Four to the Capitol with the last of the inheritance, and the family had needed the money. Effie was born out of wedlock, and her mother died in childbirth - "they told me she was beautiful, but not much else about her - even rebels still don't think anything else matters. Go figure!" - and her father - intellectual, emotionally distant, stubborn to the end - never really recovered.

"Cinna and I used to joke that we were refugees," she told him. "His family did the same, you know. His grandfather was born in Seven."

It still hurt to talk about him. Haymitch was also stunned to discover that he missed Cinna almost as much as he missed Chaff. "Weird to think about. Wasn't all that long ago that people could move around like that, even buy property in the Capitol if they had the money."

"Not many did," Effie said. She always seemed forlorn, speaking sadly and gently late at night when they talked about these sorts of things. In the mornings she was more like her old, mostly fake self - snapping at him wittily, making him laugh. Haymitch didn't have a preference, to be honest; he rather liked talking to both versions. "My father told me once that my grandfather sold his soul for it. He never explained exactly what he meant."

"You probably don't want to know," Haymitch told her seriously.

"Probably not," she agreed sadly, and changed the subject.

Nobody knew why he'd been murdered, only that he had. Snow hadn't exactly kept records on all the malcontents he'd assassinated, and there weren't many people left alive that knew who Abraham Trinket even was, let alone the reason he'd been killed. Effie had been living with the mystery for a long time, and she sounded mostly at peace with it. As much as one could be, anyway.

Haymitch told her about his mother and his brother in return for that intimacy - but not how they died, mostly because she already knew that. Instead he told her the more precious things - the memories he still held close. The tickling, the ponytail. The meals they shared, the house they'd lived in. Even the broken step that Juniper always jumped over, and the Mayor's cat. Effie went quiet and humble as he talked, and he could tell she was crying a little when she finally spoke again, when he was finished. She cried a lot, now - she'd never been able to before, she said. Too scared it would give her away. Haymitch didn't hold it against her.

On the nights he missed her calls because he was drunk, she would leave him flirty messages on the machine, which alternated between so goofy it had to cheer him up, and the more earnest, real ones that always lit him up like a house fire. Sometimes to get back at her - or just to fuck with her, which was still fun regardless of their new freedom of conversation - he'd call her when he knew she'd be busy, in meetings with Cressida about the documentary she was helping with, or at the doctor's with Peeta. The communicuff she carried sometimes broadcast his voice to the entire room if she didn't have it on the right setting; the first time he'd gotten away with calling her "kitten" in front of a room full of District Four's local government, she yelled at him for twenty minutes while Haymitch laughed himself sick.

Every night, on these serious calls, Haymitch would ask right before they hung up, "you run out of things to say yet?"

And Effie would laugh, or snort at him, or scoff, and tell him, "not yet." Haymitch sometimes fell asleep smiling, because of this ritual. It was a very odd place to be in - to be sort of happy, amongst the wreckage of so much misery. He felt a little guilty about it, but certainly not enough to stop.

"What house will I sleep in?" she asked sometimes, just to tease him. "There's quite a few empty ones in your village."

"The one down the road has a broken sump pump," Haymitch said. "Sounds right up your alley."

"What the hell is a sump pump?" Effie asked, and Haymitch snorted. "Never mind, don't tell me."

Haymitch's answers varied from "the new Mayor is single" to "one of my ganders died the other day, you could probably fit in his pen." That one backfired since Effie was oddly attached to his geese, despite having never met or seen them, and she was somewhat dismayed to hear of the fellow's demise. Haymitch talked her out of her bad mood by teasing her about how there were no high heels allowed in his Victor's Village, which by default he was now the Mayor of.

"Mayor Lowgrove is the Mayor of Twelve, which makes him the Mayor of your village," Effie said. "Also of you. He's your Mayor. So he's the boss of you, you understand."

"Nobody gives a shit about our little neighborhood out here," Haymitch said. "All the new buildings are going up on the other side of the Meadow, and most people already think we're weird anyway. Which makes me the boss, and I say: no high heels."

"Even under controlled circumstances?" Effie asked. "Like for instance, if I were wearing something that particularly suited my pair of blue and white kitten heels with the black bow, and I had your explicit permission to wear them with said outfit, there would be no room for negotiation on your decision whatsoever?"

It was deeply sad that Haymitch knew exactly which heels she was talking about. "Are you telling me you have lingerie that matches your shoes?"

"No," Effie said. "I'm _implying_ it."

"Okay," Haymitch said, grinning, "we're gonna talk about _that_ when you get here."

There was an ease to it that felt familiar but also brand new, as if they really had been talking like this all those years, just silently. Haymitch struggled with the things he'd always struggled with, but they seemed more manageable than they'd ever been before. Nightmares, flashbacks, memories. They had always been there, and at some point he'd accepted that they always would be. It didn't feel like something he had to aggressively not think about anymore.

It felt natural for Effie to arrive in Twelve in winter instead of summer; before, when she'd sweep into town for the Reapings, it had been such a huge to-do that she'd actually attracted crowds some years at the train station. Hot sun overhead, an umbrella shielding her makeup from the glare, tottering down the path in her high heels as she jabbered to Undersee on their way towards the center of town. The difference between then and now was as simple as the weather: this time, she had no wig, no make up. She was dressed in pants and a longer winter coat that matched Peeta's in color. Nobody came to greet them but Haymitch. And this time, she was coming to stay.

"Haymitch," Peeta said, as they disembarked the train. He always spoke as if he were testing the waters, confirming something he wasn't sure was true. Haymitch nodded, and clasped the boy's arm in greeting, surprised to discover that there was firm muscle beneath his sleeve, and color in his cheeks. "Good to see you."

"Likewise," Haymitch said, and actually meant it. Peeta smiled at him, looking almost normal, and then turned to look at Effie, who was hanging back by a bench, doing something weird to her shoes. Peeta's smile turned fond. "What the fuck is she doing?"

"She said it was an inside joke," Peeta said, shaking his head in quiet humor. "Eff, come on. I warned you there'd still be snow on the ground - "

"It's supposed to be _spring,_ it's _April,_ " Effie said, and Haymitch realized with a start that she was actually taking off her heeled boots. Her hair was pulled into a crown braid pinned delicately around her head with small blue clips, but her face was bare, and her clothes were plain and well-worn. Circles under her eyes, her nails torn and uncared for. She looked more beautiful than she ever had before, Haymitch thought. "Anyway, rules are rules. Oh hello Haymitch, didn't see you there at first."

"Are you fucking crazy?" Haymitch asked, a smile crawling across his face as he watched her tug at the buckles on her shoes. "What are you doing?"

"You said heels weren't allowed!" Effie tugged one of them off triumphantly, wobbling as she tried to keep her balance, and then started in on the next one.

"So you're gonna walk barefoot through the whole town? Why didn't you just wear something else?"

"I don't own anything else. They seized all my bank accounts, you know, I had to make due with whatever was left over at my old apartment. Most of my things were ransacked of course, but I managed to salvage a few - oh - " Effie jumped, her head snapping up at the touch of Haymitch's hand. "Hello."

"Hi," Haymitch said, tugging her hand away from her shoe, wrapping it in a loose grip. "Kitten."

"Fuck you," Effie sputtered, shoving at his chest, but Haymitch dodged her hands and leaned in close to kiss her cheek, which made her blush so furiously she covered her eyes with her free hand. "You're ridiculous."

" _You're_ ridiculous. Put your fucking shoes back on."

"No, I just took them off!"

"Wow," Peeta said dryly, watching them off to the side. "You're both ridiculous." He walked over and casually snagged Effie's boots from off the ground, tucking them under one arm. "I thought I wasn't remembering it right. The way you two were."

"What do you mean the 'way we were?'" Haymitch demanded, but Peeta was already walking away, smirking and aiming for the gate towards the main street, taking Effie's boots with him. Effie shot him a look and followed, dodging his hands again as he tried to pull her back. "Hey. _Hey,_ come on, you can't walk all the way to the village without shoes, people will think I invited a mental patient into my house. _Hey -_ "

Needless to say, neither of them had developed the habit of listening to him in the months they'd been apart.

They didn't have luggage either, which was kind of sad but made sense - Effie did have a shoulder bag, which Haymitch recognized as having once belonged to Cinna. She had a suitcase being sent later on, she explained, as most of it needed to be cleared by customs - customs! Imagine - and vetted for sensitive material, weapons, et cetera. Being a Capitol citizen, she was subject to a few more stringent laws that Paylor had passed to appease what was left of Coin's loyalists, but even that was quickly fading by the wayside. Nobody had escaped the war unscathed. And most of the Capitol people were scattered amongst the Districts now - the city was significantly smaller, and housed nothing but hospitals and government offices at the moment.

"Most of this is Peeta's sketchbooks," she explained, stubbornly navigating the potholed street in her bare stockings. Peeta shot her a fond smile, carefully watching her right side as Haymitch took the left. Effie barely noticed, so concentrated on trying not to fall and avoiding the wet patches of muddy snow. "He's having a bag sent too. Mostly things from Annie and Jo."

"Jo's learning to knit," Peeta informed Haymitch neutrally.

"Naturally," Haymitch said.

"Her therapist suggested it," Effie said, grabbing Haymitch's arm suddenly as she stumbled, and then yanking it away again the second she righted herself. Haymitch and Peeta exchanged an amused look over her head. "She made me a lovely scarf. See?" She tugged it out from beneath her shirt collar. It was an unholy mix of blue and grey and black yarn, and there were several very gaping holes. Effie beamed at it like it was an expensive piece of high fashion couture. "At least she finished it. And even with the holes it hasn't started to unravel! She's making so much progress."

Haymitch bit back a smile, looking again over her head to see Peeta doing the same thing. "How's the baby?"

"Oh, wonderful," Effie said with a sigh. "They promised me they'd come visit. Annie's going to call me tonight - I gave her your number, Haymitch, I hope that's alright."

"Of course it is," Haymitch said gruffly. It occurred to him that for all their teasing, they'd never actually confirmed verbally that she would be staying at his house. To his mind it was obvious - where the fuck else would she be? As if he would let her live in one of the empty ghost houses in the Victor's Village? Or God forbid, in the main part of town, so he'd have to walk past the graves in the Meadow to see her every day? Fuck that. "Did they finally decide on a name?"

"Not yet," Peeta said, still looking far too amused for a kid who had recently been brainwashed. "Jo keeps calling him 'the little shit.' Annie and Effie are terrified that he'll only respond to that, even after they do come up with a first name."

"He's not a puppy," Effie protested, "it's not _that,_ it's just - he's a _baby,_ she shouldn't call him that."

Peeta smiled at her. "I think that's why she does it, Eff," he said. "Anyway, Annie doesn't seem to like anyone's suggestions. I'm pretty sure she wants to name him after Finnick, but she's afraid of Jo's reaction."

"She'd come around," Effie said confidently, and then stumbled again. Peeta and Haymitch both steadied her, on either side. "I'm fine! I'm fine."

"For God's sake," Haymitch said, "would you put your shoes back on?"

"I'm not sure she'd fare any better in these things actually," Peeta said, holding out one of her boots. The heel was weirdly shaped, almost wavy, in the ostentatious style of the Capitol of old. "We tried to get her some regular boots, but did you know she's got freakishly small feet? We couldn't find anything that fit her, not even in the donation boxes at the hospital."

"They're not _freakish,_ " Effie said. "They're _delicate._ "

"Is that why Cinna used to call you 'Miss Cricket' all the time?" Haymitch asked, and Peeta laughed in surprise.

Effie scowled. "That was a childhood nickname. He made it up when we were _nine._ "

"Oh, I get it, because you're short, and it rhymes with Trinket," Peeta said, still laughing. It was good to see him laugh - Haymitch wasn't sure he'd ever seen it on Peeta's face outside of the interviews with Caesar Flickerman. "Miss Cricket Trinket. It suits you."

"Alright now," Effie said, cutting across the teasing imperiously. Her sly smile gave her away, though. "That's quite enough."

Haymitch caught her by the waist as she stumbled again. "First thing we're gonna do is buy some decent shoes. Jesus," he said.

"Is the town opening back up again?" Peeta asked, looking around at their surroundings with a sort of detached curiosity. "When I spoke to Delly last, she said not much was open yet."

"Some people have come back," Haymitch admitted. Peeta hadn't seen Twelve since before the Quarter Quell; he hadn't even seen the pictures they'd sent of the aftermath of the bombings. He was far too unstable at the time to handle it. He seemed to be doing alright with it now, looking around with furrowed brows at the visible signs of destruction, and the rebuilding efforts that were almost nonexistent, this far out from the center of town. Most of the people who'd returned had gathered around the Hob like moths to a flame; familiarity was what they wanted more than anything, Haymitch guessed. It was inconvenient for several reasons - the water source was still compromised, and most families had twice as far to walk to the train station every day for the shipments of clean water and food that came from Eleven. But people were people, and people were stubborn. "But it's slow going, getting the buildings back into shape. Not many of the ones still standing are even safe anymore, they'll probably have to rebuild from scratch. Most business takes place in people's living rooms, nowadays."

"Nothing wrong with that," Peeta said quietly. He shook his head, as if to clear it, and his calm smile from before returned. "Cressida wanted to come with us and film some stuff for her documentaries. Effie scared her off."

"I didn't _scare_ her, I just - "

"She scared her," Peeta told Haymitch, with no small amount of satisfaction. Haymitch barked a laugh that ruffled the hair on Effie's head. "Told her stories about the mine, and radiation from the bombs - "

" _Not_ true," Effie said, holding up heroically beneath their teasing. "I simply told her that it would be a good idea to let people breathe a little first, before shoving cameras in their faces."

That sentence carried a little more weight, especially from Effie's mouth, who had flinched every time a stranger looked at her on the walk over. Haymitch kept his arm around her waist, and watched with a mixture of incredulity and a sort of throbbing, helpless fondness as Peeta reached out and squeezed Effie's free hand.

It was good that they'd gotten close. Haymitch was irritated by their ease with each other in the way he was always irritated by cute, loving things - like he couldn't look at it for too long without getting itchy, feeling like a grumpy old man. He retaliated against the feeling by relentlessly giving her shit for the entire walk, right up until they neared the fresh gravel that marked the entrance to the neighborhood that was loosely being called "those old shacks that Everdeen and Abernathy are squatting in," at which point he swept Effie off her feet and onto his shoulder quickly enough that she didn't have time to jump away.

She shrieked in surprise. "No! Absolutely not!"

"It'll hurt your feet, sweetheart," he said, ignoring her protests entirely and marching up the road to his porch. Peeta trailed behind them, looking sort of embarrassed by the display, but also like he might burst into laughter any minute, and was successfully distracted from Katniss' house, which was sitting closed up with the lights off and the doors locked as it usually was. (Perhaps that had been his actual motivation. No way for them to tell, really, if Haymitch never admitted it.)

"You're a brute," Effie said, and then shrieked again when he dumped her on the ground in front of the stairs. She caught her balance easily though, and immediately chased him forward to try and smack him, thwarted only by how quick on his feet he still was. Despite his age and general deterioration of motor skills, he could still dodge an angry woman with long nails any day. No man ever lost that skill. "An absolute _brute!_ "

"Yeah," Haymitch agreed, laughing and jumping up backwards on the steps to avoid another swat. "Don't call me that again while the boy is watching, honey, you're gonna make me cause a scene."

" _Make_ you!" Effie huffed, her cheeks bright red again. Haymitch was beginning to suspect that the reason she'd worn that bright white powder all those years was actually because she _blushed easily,_ which was a stunning revelation that made Haymitch feel downright giddy. "You've already embarrassed him. Look! Peeta, are you embarrassed?"

"By the two of you? Always," Peeta said, one boot on the bottom step of Haymitch's porch. He'd been looking over at Katniss' place of course - but the expression on his face was easy and unbothered when he met Haymitch's gaze.

"He ain't embarrassed," Haymitch said, holding Peeta's eyes. The boy grinned at him faintly and then looked away, glancing back at Katniss' dark windows again briefly before he turned to smile at Effie, who was blinking at him in concern. It felt like a decision had been made, when Peeta reached out to hand Effie back the boots, folding them gently into her hands like they were precious. "Your house ain't in any shape yet to sleep in. You should stay here tonight, kid."

"That's alright," Peeta said easily. "Delly told me about the broken boiler. It's not that cold out, I'll be fine for a few days. Besides, I can always light a fire."

"Oh, just for tonight?" Effie pleaded, although it sounded perfunctory, as if she knew Peeta would again say no. "Stay for dinner, at least. Haymitch, please tell me there's food in your house somewhere. _Edible_ food."

"I got half a deer ready for butchering," Haymitch said, just to watch the face she'd make. She didn't disappoint; her nose wrinkled up and she shuddered, which made him grin.

Peeta was smirking like he was silently making fun of them both, which he probably was. His dry way of walking through the world was endlessly charming to Haymitch, most especially because he could see it visibly pissing people off as they read his wryness as superiority. Katniss had a similar way of making enemies everywhere she went, albeit in a much blunter way; in some ways, the idiot kids were simply made for each other. "I ate on the train. I'm fine. Really, Eff." He stepped in for a hug, and Effie immediately clung to him, rocking back and forth on the step as they squeezed each other tightly. Without her heels, Peeta had a full six inches on her, and it was only because she was standing on the bottom step that she even came up to his shoulder. "I'll stop by in the morning. Really." He murmured something else, too soft for Haymitch to hear, and when he stepped back they both looked teary eyed.

"Call if you need anything then," Effie said, blinking her tears away. They both had blue eyes, Haymitch realized for the first time. "Really. Any time, day or night."

"Only if you do the same," Peeta said, stepping away from her reluctantly. When he looked up at Haymitch again, he looked sort of sheepish. "If that's alright with you, Haymitch - breakfast, I mean. There's no food worth eating in my house, probably, but Delly told me I could borrow some ingredients from her when I got back. Maybe I could bake something."

"It's been so long since you baked! He made us all sorts of things in Four," Effie said. "Annie fell in love with his honeybread muffins."

"Didn't realize how much I'd missed it," Peeta said with a shrug.

"Don't need to bring anything," Haymitch told them. "Sae brought me some groceries when I told her you were coming. Plenty to use here."

"It's a plan then," Effie said. She reached out for Peeta's hand again, both of them clearly reluctant to leave each other. Haymitch looked away as they hugged, allowing them one last moment of privacy, but was surprised to hear them laughing a little as they pulled away. Peeta shuffled his feet as he stepped back, his prosthetic foot dragging a little in the rough gravel as he rubbed one knuckle beneath his eye. Effie huffed, wiped her own face, and then laughed. "Alright then, we're being silly now. We'll see you in the morning."

"Right. Morning." Peeta shot them both one last grin, and then turned his proud shoulders and walked away, down the twilight road to his house. All three homes were in sight of each other, of course - which made the finality of the moment seem even more ridiculous.

Still, Effie was tearful when she climbed the steps up to Haymitch on the porch, still in her muddy stockings. Her braid was messy and disheveled from the light rain that had tracked them there from the station, and Haymitch reached out and touched her temple with his thumb, in a spot above her ear where her hair was dark with water.

"Hello," she said, lifting her chin. Haymitch moved his hand so that he was holding the side of her face, and she sighed, leaning her cheek against his palm.

"Hello," Haymitch said back, and kissed her. She was rumpled and damp all over, and she shivered like she'd never been touched before, even though Haymitch had touched her quite a lot. He'd kissed her every place he'd been allowed to, in those few tense days before he'd been sent back to Twelve with Katniss, and kissing her now, he knew it would never be enough. It would always feel like a gift, like the first time, like some grace from a God that he'd thought had forgotten him long ago.

She hummed a little when he pulled away, her eyes staying closed for a long moment even after the kiss ended. "You know," she said, "it occurs to me that I've never been inside your house."

"I've invited you plenty of times," Haymitch said, moving his hands to her shoulders. They felt thin beneath his hands - Peeta had told him she wasn't eating well. A common symptom, for those that had been starved in the prisons during the siege. "Not my fault you always turned your nose up at me."

Effie laughed, unoffended by the jab. "You know very well that I would've said yes, if I could have."

"Well," Haymitch said with a shrug, "maybe. Nice to hear you say it."

"You're not doubting me now, are you? I followed your rule!" Effie said. "I walked to you in my _bare feet,_ Haymitch."

"You're wearing socks," Haymitch pointed out.

"I think it was even uphill most of the way," Effie pointed out, slipping her sly hands beneath his jacket and flattening her palms out against the small of his back.

"Well, a man likes to be encouraged," Haymitch said, indulging in the embrace for a moment before stepping back and pulling her towards the door. Inside was better. Many things could happen, inside his house. "Do you hear that?"

"What?" Effie asked, and then straightened up beneath his arm. "Oh - the geese?"

"Well - yeah," Haymitch said, "they're always that loud though. That's not what I meant."

"I've already gotten used to them, just hearing them in the background on the phone," Effie said amusedly. She peered curiously through the little window on his door, clearly itching to see the inside. Considering the general state of cleanliness of his home, Haymitch was very much looking forward to the fight that would ensue when it thoroughly disappointed her. "What did you mean?"

"I meant - listen." He held her still for a moment, and watched as she closed her eyes, taking in the rather loud surroundings of his house. The geese in the pen out back, who squawked at all hours, the hum of his boiler, more than a few years out of date - and the sounds of the forest, and the sky, the rain and the wind and the rumbling thunder in the distance, the braying of the cattle in the field that belonged to the farmers that had settled a few miles away, the bugs in the tall, uncut grass and the faint bugle calls of the cranes that were nesting temporarily at the watering pond near the timberline. "You hear that?"

"Hm. Yes," Effie said. The look on her face was as serene as he'd ever witnessed her to be.

Haymitch smiled at her. "Nobody here but us," he told her, and Effie blinked her eyes open in surprise, tearful once more. "We can say whatever the fuck we want. As _loud_ as we want. Isn't that something?"

"Oh," Effie said, sounding thunderstruck. "Oh. Yes, that is something."

She was crying again. Haymitch thought he could probably get used to it - wiping away her tears. It was a man's job, after all. A job for the kind of man that Haymitch was considering letting himself become.

"Come on," he said, "your little cricket feet are probably sore as hell."

"I mean - yes," Effie said with a huff. She grabbed his hand and kissed his knuckles quickly, before he could react. Her little affections were always lightning quick - he could see that she was still trying to get used to it, being able to be herself. Say whatever she wanted, kiss him out in the open. The fear would take a long time to go away completely. "They do hurt. But since it's pain that I willingly endured for you, I expect you to make me feel better somehow. A massage, a hot bath - "

"Did I not mention that my boiler's also on the fritz?" Haymitch said, and Effie scowled at him. "I mean, you could take a hot bath, sure. But then there won't be any hot water for dinner. It's one or the other, honey, you have to pick your priority."

"How did you ever survive on your own for this long? It's a damned miracle," Effie said furiously, and stalked past him into the house. She gave another cry of disgust - probably at the bag of trash he'd left near the front door, with the specific purpose to make her make that sound - and Haymitch laughed.

"No idea," he said, and followed her in. The night was young - if they timed it right, they could still have both.

Why the full heart is speechless, is one of the great wherefores.  
EMILY, with love.

_Emily Dickinson in correspondence to Olive Stearns, 1878._


End file.
